Let Slip The Dogs Of War (Part I)

In which I discuss in detail the games I ran at Cauldron 2025, spoiling secrets and providing insights into the cracked mind of a geezer DM....

FRIDAY BLOCK I: Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame

Friday Block I was billed as a “Temple of Doom/Sidekick:” a short gaming session (only three hours in length compared to the other, four-hour time slots) designed to ease people in as they arrived for the con. People were given time to check in, find their rooms, gather their bedding (we made our own beds), and snack and coffee-up prior to the session, which ran from 4pm to 7pm (at which time dinner would be served). Quickly dressing my bed (deducing…correctly…that I’d be in no shape to do so at the end of the night), I discovered that my room had been stuffed full of Americans, many of whom I knew by reputation (and voice) from the internet, but whom I’d never met. Great guys, all around. Gus has a tremendous mustache of which I am tremendously jealous.

Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame is not a “Becker” original; it is, rather, a tactical exercise Anthony Huso designed and wrote as an introduction to his players when he first re-booted his AD&D campaign some ten or so years ago. He details this on his blog: as a campaign starter, he had his players create new, 1st level PCs, but then RAN them through a high mid-level adventure using EVIL pre-gens of his own design, sacking a temple of goodness. Following the scenario, he returned the players their original character sheets and kicked off the campaign proper with the PCs dealing with the aftermath of the destructive raid.

It's a fine idea; quite clever, in my opinion. The adventure itself (the map and his game notes) are freely available on his blog, and I decided to run the thing at Cauldron…something different, something fast, something that I knew had already been play-tested by one of the modern masters of the AD&D craft. Easy-peasy.

Unfortunately, Huso long ago lost the character sheets for the pre-gens, and I was forced to recreate them (best as I could) from the notes he provided. This was the bulk of my prep, made more than a bit challenging by his use of three evil NPC classes (the anti-paladin, the necromancer, and the witch) from Dragon Magazine. I am familiar with these, but I’m not particularly enthused by their implementation or execution in the mag. As such, I altered the classes rather drastically from how they appear. Here’s what I brought to the tournament:

• Caul, Flayer of Men: 8th level “Anti-Paladin:” abilities taken from Hackmaster…basically as a paladin except with reversed abilities (cause wounds instead of heal, befriend undead instead of turning, protection from good instead of evil, etc.).
• Vessvka Vith, Drow “Witch:” female Dark Elf cleric/magic-user of 6th/6th level.
• Tergomant Glim: 7th level cleric and a monster of a man (18 STR, 6’1”, 270#; wields a footman’s mace with one hand).
• Ergonin Hews: 6th level half-orc fighter, wielding double-fisted hand axes. Agile for an orc (Dex 17).
• Nicodemus Plath: 7th level half-elf assassin, based loosely on my son’s main PC of the same type.
• Sable Croft: 7th level human fighter; exceptional strength (though less than Caul) with a magic bardiche. More beef.
• Vlaimir Sush: 5th level Necromancer; totally unchanged from the Dragon mag entry and given a scythe for a weapon because evil necromancers with two-handed scythes are the height of coolness, even if the class kind of sucks.
• Barthax Brunst: 6th level dwarven fighter/thief. NOT one of Huso’s originals (he only lists seven characters, probably because he only had seven players). I wanted more PCs in the party because Huso throws psionic couatls, silver dragons, clay golems, and magic-user/monks at people (he’s a bad, bad man). Also, the fighter/thief built in some skill redundancy for the party.

For the adventure itself, I reformatted and (partially) rewrote what Huso had done. Anthony, God love him, has a penchant for writing the purplest of prose…he is an actual author, after all…but I needed things terse and punchy, both to match my personal style as well as the three hour widow with which I was working.

Likewise, I had to remove the various “Huso-isms” throughout the text: monks getting DEX bonuses to AC, or bonuses from wearing “silk armor,” anything that appeared to come from the UA, nutty magical “eye traps” that had multiple effects and would be a bear to adjudicate without a battle map (something I don’t use). Huso loves nothing better than a protracted siege battle a la The Forgotten Temple of Tharizdun, but I didn’t plan on forcing the PCs to charge in guns ablaze. Why would they, when so many of their party members were more powerful in subtler ways? 

Besides, the adventure was plenty deadly as is.

Oh, yes…I also removed encounters #29-#33 and their associated sections of the map (too long, mostly empty, and redundant) and axed some of the other weird, none-too-normal weirdness (room #27 is simply empty and I switched the "Starfire Neonate" for a more Golden Child-like "Celestial Being").

[everyone knows the old Eddie Murphy “Golden Child” movie, right? The adventure gives off quite a bit of that vibe anyway]

Thing is, Huso made a divine being in need of slaying, but then gave it immunity to weapons of less than +3 while only arming his pre-gens with +2 weapons (come on, Anthony!); as such, capture/kidnapping had to be on the table, unless I really wanted to spend time re-stocking the dungeon (but, then, that would have made the adventure more drawn out as PCs would have to search for items to use to destroy the child and yadda-yadda-yadda. No).

Interested people who want my pre-gens and the re-tooled/formatted adventure I used at Cauldron can download them HERE and HERE, respectively. In play, I changed/improvised the last paragraph of the “START” to explain their mission: find and destroy…or capture…the “Celestial Child” (with no more information given as to what exactly a “Celestial Child” is).

So how did it actually go? Great! The players decided NOT to charge into the dungeon, but scouted ahead with their assassin instead, who was able to completely surprise and recon the couatl and monks in room #1 and report back without sounding the alarm. Using silence to first neutralize the spell-casting ability of all within the chamber, the PCs then charged into battle and put paid to the initial guardians without sounding the alarm. Pretty good start.

In the great hall, however, they were forced to decide on a course of action…and had trouble doing so. Eventually they decided to just start “opening doors” and seeing what was behind them, which led to them alerting the four clerics in room #7, the bulk of whom would sell their lives while the other two retreated through the many redoubts of the map to alert the temple proper. The players pursued, but the need to unlock doors (and getting hit by fire glyphs, etc.) slowed them down. They managed to NOT activate the clay golems in chamber 14, found the secret door, and the corridor that led to the trapdoor in area #6 (wherein resides a silver dragon). However, before going through that they waited for Chomy (playing the necromancer), who had been gathering dead monks and clerics to make maximum use of his one animate zombie spell. The party waited below while they sent a pair of their “undead soldiers” up the ladder to scout around.

And then watched as the zombies were vaporized with fire.

By this time (of course) the bell had started sounding in the grand hall, the temple was on alert, and minions were rallying to their battle positions, as they had been trained to do. The party knew that time was of the essence, but they were still trying to compose a battle plan of their own, arguing the virtues of one form of action or another.

While they were doing that, the trapdoor opened above and the magic-user launched a fireball into the narrow corridor below. So much for the necromancer and his zombies.

The PCs returned fire…perhaps Nicodemus with his poisoned darts and/or Barthax with his crossbow…slaying the magic-user. The group then decided to posse to head up the ladder and not wait around anymore. Of course, they saw the dragon, as well as the other magic-user (with a wand of lightning). Much hilarity ensued as more PCs were cooked but, in the end, they slew both and made their way to the battle royale with THE TWILIGHT PRINCESS herself. Much fun, but the forces of evil eventually triumphed (I think Marcellia was felled with a hold person spell, a common theme of the con...), and the remaining survivors (which I believe only included Caul, Tergomant, and Vessvka), made their way to the Child, who was fairly obvious considering the lilac skin, single blue eye, and enormous halo of light. All good: they removed the child, the temple started to shudder, and everyone headed for the exits (including the surviving defenders of the temple).

A good, solid game and just a few minutes over our three-hour time slot…we still made it to dinner with plenty of time to spare. 

*****

FRIDAY BLOCK II (Friday Night): the Battle Emridy Meadows. 

As I described in my prior post, I played in Settembrini's Chainmail game…at least until I could no longer physically stand without the risk of collapse. I bowed out around midnight and hit the hay at roughly 12:30am. I was then awakened at 6:45am by several successive members of the American contingent marching through my room to use the shower (the one bathroom being located nearest to my bed). The person occupying the cot next to me slept like the dead and snored like a chainsaw (so loudly that individuals from two doors down commented on it)…fortunately, for me he was a bit of a “white noise generator” and actually led to a fairly restful repose.

I finally dragged myself out of bed around 7:30, as much to use the bathroom myself (which I had to go down four flights and leave the building to do, given the person occupying the shower), and headed for breakfast.

*****

SATURDAY BLOCK I: Rivers of Blood, Death, and Glory. 

I will talk about this in a separate post.

*****

SATURDAY BLOCK II: Caul’s Dark Citadel

The afternoon session, after lunch, and this time I would be doing a “Becker Original.” Ever since seeing WotC’s use of “the D&D kids” (from the 1981 D&D cartoon) as “content” for their new 5E 2024 books (and on the cover of their Stormwreck Isle starter set), I’ve wanted to write my own adventure that featured these characters. And for Cauldron, I decided that I would use them in a sequel adventure to Huso’s Silver Temple of Transcendent Flame.

My plan was to make the adventure more of a stealth/infiltration in contrast to the Caul's destructive raid to showcase different styles of play. The PCs would be tasked with the recovery of the Celestial Child’s remains: a mercy mission fitting their 'good guy' ethos, as opposed to a task of vengeance. I figured the PCs could return the ashes (or whatever) to the Silver Temple, where the surviving monks would use the power of "transcendent flame" (or whatever) to raise it from the dead. This was my idea for quite a while, even after I realized it was a long shot that Caul and his buddies would actually figure out a way to kill the Child.

And yet, that wasn’t my main problem. The main problem was the actual adventure site, i.e. the map. I needed a stronghold for Caul...and while it couldn’t be too large, it still had to feel like an “epic evil fortress.” Or, at least, weird. Or both. But with a capped number of encounters.

*sigh*  Let me explain.

In a convention time block...even a four hour one (which is long enough that you need to give the players at least a break, in my opinion)...there’s a limit to how many encounters they can get through. An excellent example is the tournament scenario found in Dave “Zeb” Cook’s module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The scenario is a linear gauntlet: each encounter area needs to be bypassed, one after another. There are no branching decision points, no side treks, no work arounds. You have ten encounter areas…TEN…and that’s it. I’ve run this scenario countless times over the years, but the last two times were for Cauldron 2023, one in playtest (at home) and once at the convention itself, and both times with strict attention paid to the time limit. And in BOTH instances, I found it impossible for the players involved to navigate the entire length within the time frame…NINE encounters was the most anyone ever got through in four hours.

Dwellers is pretty dastardly, and it’s a good example for study: you have two large, “set piece” encounters. You have two “tricky” encounters that can be avoided through cleverness. You have one “trick/trap” room, you have two “small” encounters that should be resolved quickly, and you have one “medium” encounter that would normally be okay, but due to its position (at the end of the adventure), the party will be low on resources like hit points and spells and so it will PLAY harder than it might otherwise play. The last two encounters are (effectively) “empty” locations with nothing there except possible time wasting by the party. Generally speaking, a good overall formula…but, again, still too long for the time slot (it runs about 15-20 minutes over four hours, and I run the thing like a machine).

And anyway, this is supposed to be a fortress…a CASTLE, not a linear gauntlet. Dwellers works because of the scenario itself…you are burrowing through a mountain following a tunnel into the heart of the forbidden city. But I wanted something that could be explored with branches and loops and whatnot…an environment for exploration in other words. Where and how to even begin. So, I started thinking about what Caul’s castle would like like…something gifted to him by Dark Patrons (of course) since he was only 8th level and not stout enough to build his own. As such, it could be as twisted and fantastic as I wanted. And, of course, it would need ways to sneak in (because, duh, stealth mission, not “Avengers Assemble” frontal assault). So probably through a cistern or catacomb or something.

IN FACT, my original idea was to simply re-purpose the Pax Tharkas mission from DL1…even using the map from that module. How easy! (mmm…now that I’m remembering I was ALSO planning on using warped version of the DL heroes as the pre-gens before I finally decided on the D&D Kids). But after looking over Pax Tharkas, I realized that it was really, really crappy. I needed something else.

Eventually, after bouncing off several different ideas (including a Harold Lamb description of the Hashashin's lair..and having my daughter draw me a castle map), I finally decided on something I could live with: the castle from the Jim Henson film, The Dark Crystal. It had everything I needed…a way in through the tunnels beneath (in addition to a front gate), a crazy-ass interior, vivid rooms/chambers (from the film), verticality, etc., etc. A place for Caul to set his throne, a lab for Caul’s evil wizard to do apothecary stuff, a “temple room” (the crystal chamber) for the witch to perform her dark rites, etc. Now all I needed was a MAP of the place…and I found THIS on-line:

Look at that thing, ain’t it a beauty? Except of course, it’s got the cutaway floor plan that doesn’t work for me and actually making the thing make sense was going to require a whole bunch of scribbling and erasing and scribbling on my part.

SO…I procrastinated. I detailed the actual encounter areas, numbered at 15. 'Hey! 15 is more than nine,' you say…heck, it’s more than ten! Yes, but this is not a "linear gauntlet." I wrote the thing in such a way that there were some nine-ish encounter areas for the PCs to surpass to both A) reach the Child’s destination (which would be determined by the results in the earlier “Silver Temple” adventure), and B) escape the dungeon. Because…stealth, right? We don’t need to confront Caul and his minions (though, if you do, it's frosting…). In addition, I threw in a bunch of slave areas (people for 'good guys' to rescue) because, of course there are slaves (like the podlings in the movie) AND...because I wanted to go “full Henson”...I also stocked in all the DC’s “Garthim” (giant black crabs…same stats as the MM) as Caul’s mutated guardian minions. Chef’s kiss.

HOW’D IT GO? Well, I'd hoped to get some of the same players from my Friday, Silver Temple adventure (continuity), but no such luck. Sign-up sheets filled FAST. And "Best DM" winner Grutzi…who had contacted me before the con and left this session open specifically to play this adventure at my table was unable to get a spot! Crap. I had only seven pre-gens (my other games were all 8+) because, of course, there aren’t all that many “D&D kids.”

[no, there was no “Uni the Unicorn;” my characters are a decade older and Uni has long since left ‘em to join a herd or something. The seventh pre-gen PC was a grown up version of Varla the Illusionist, a minor character introduced as a love interest for Presto in an episode I believe is called The Last Illusion. Yeah…an illusionist girlfriend. Suck it, Hank!]

Adult Varla

But at the last second, I decided that I was being stupid and I just went and grabbed Grutz and told him: get one of his own pre-gens and join the party. We went with eight and he brought a cleric, which was a welcome addition...although I had converted the older “Sheila” into a (dual-classed) thief/cleric to ensure the party sported some divine power. Now they had more.

ANYway...despite finishing the maps only two days before I hopped a plane and not getting a chance to play-test the thing…it played surprisingly well! The players decided to climb the castle (forgot to put rope on their equipment list…whoops!) and enter through the highest tower, working their way DOWN rather than UP. Which was fine…that, too, was a way I'd coded my encounters for the con. Their first encounter was with the assassin Nicodemus Plath, contemplating his life choices in the lookout. They got into a scrap with him and should have been poisoned five ways to Sunday, but my die rolls were pretty horrendous, and they beat the snot out of him. I had him surrender and then they got to tie him up and do some "role-playing" as they interrogated him about the layout of the place. “Well, it’s kind of hard to describe...”

Thing is, my map was all wonky with “non-Euclidean geometry:” due to me trying to crib together a vertical map into something horizontal I just ended up using no corners (nor even many straight lines), just a lot of “bendy,” wrap-around tunnels and a great many stairwells and changes of elevation. It worked well to make the whole expedition confusing, frustrating, and painful for the characters, as the slaves they encountered had only partial information and even then could only say, “Well, it’s kind of hard to describe…” Much hilarity.

However, the players were determined to kill Caul, Divine Child or not. One of the players, Dillon, was a self-professed Huso fan and knew all about Caul and really wanted to off the guy (Dillon was very enthusiastic about everything, actually…I think he was having a pretty good time as his first Cauldron…). They figured out where Caul’s throne room was and hatched some cockamamie plan to disguise themselves as a Drow (Diana wearing the witch’s clothes from a ransacked bedroom) and a slave (Varla using change self) with an invisible Sheila in tow to backstab the guy or some such. Caul wasn’t buying it of course…everyone in his castle was cleared by him and he knew there wasn’t any other Drows or “new cultists,” and also knew that slaves weren’t allowed in the throne room (other than his chained up scribe), so he dispatched his cadre of gnolls to round up the obvious imposters.

Fighting ensued; damage was done, Bobby stunned the hell out of everyone with a thunderclap (including his own people), but Sheila got off a hold person on Caul and the party carried the day to much fanfare. They found Caul’s hidden treasure vault, trapped with a necrophidius (credit to ChatGPT for that idea), but still: no Divine Child.

“We’ve got to find that temple with the witch…maybe we need to keep going lower.” But the party really did not want to end up in the catacombs…they had a sneaking suspicion that would be a BAD IDEA (and they were right because...you know...Garthim). But a little lower they went and ended up in the slave pens and fought and killed an ogre with a big old whip (not as dangerous as it could have been) and then said “AHA! Let’s cast speak with dead on the ogre and see if he can tell us where we find the Child!” Okay, cleric, you get two questions:

“Where’s the Divine Child, dead guy?” With the witch…

“How do we get to the temple?” Well, it’s kind of hard to describe…

Hahaha…no, just kidding. He told them go up the stairs to the main hall and take a right. How hard is that?!

They found the temple, the child, and the her cultist acolytes worshipping a stone obelisk, roughly shaped like a spider, that floated above a red glowing pit (Dark Crystal, right?). Eric was dressed in Caul’s armor, Varla was doing her illusion thing and they got close enough to the witch to trap her INSIDE Erik’s “dome of force” (that his magic shield could project 1/day), while the others blasted the cultists and Diana grabbed the Child and ran like hell (as a 6th level monk she was uber-fast) up to the top tower where she could feather fall off. Pretty sure Shiela ran behind her as backup.

Well, that wasn’t so hard…what the--?! As the GIANT MUTANT CRABS in the shadowed alcoves came out to attack. More combat but they won the day, the witch surrendered, and the party made her divest herself of all her gear and commanded her to return to the UnderDark, never to return.

All with minutes to spare before the dinner bell. Good stuff.

[to be continued...]

A moment of unbridled joy...

J is for Jungle

I missed the April A-Z Blog Challenge this year, so I'm doing my own...in June. This year, I will be posting one post per day discussing my AD&D campaign, for the curious. Since 2020, this is the ONLY campaign I run. Enjoy!

J is for Jungle...the jungles of Oregon. Every vanilla fantasy campaign requires a "deep dark jungle" region to hide lost cities and dangerous cannibals and whatnot. For my campaign, that region is Oregon.

Oregon, as part of the Pac Northwest, is a lot like Washington State, except that it's worse in just about every way possible.   

[Haha ! I could enumerate all the ways I prefer my state to our southern neighbors, but suffice is to say that there exists a "friendly" rivalry between our states and you're probably not going to change my (subjective) opinion on the matter. Be content with your Ducks lording it over the Huskies, Oregon readers]

Anyway, there are a LOT of similarities between the two states, but my setting doesn't need a "lesser Washington" south of the Columbia. What I need is some place to put adventures like Dwellers of the Forbidden City...another border area for exploration and adventure that becomes more and more dangerous the farther you leave the (Washington) epicenter of the campaign. 

So, yeah: jungle. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to convert Oregonian forest into dense jungle, even with global warming / climate change. Just heating up the world's temperature doesn't make the place wetter...in fact, it causes the eastern part of Oregon to become more arid and prone to drought than it already is. Plus the latitude puts the state too far north to keep it tropical all year round...frost is a thing, and I really don't want to have to tilt my planetary axis.

Instead, after much googling and chatGPTing, I found a way to change the Oregonian climate with the O So Original Idea of dropping California into the ocean (no great loss, there...). Here's how it looks:

A catastrophic tectonic upheaval along the San Andreas Fault fractures California, causing vast swaths of the coastline — including Los Angeles, the Central Valley, and parts of the Sierra Nevada — to collapse below sea level. The Pacific Ocean rushes in, forming a vast inland sea stretching from present-day Redding to the Gulf of California. This new body of water, dubbed the Cascadian Sea, becomes a powerful new thermal engine, radically altering weather and ocean current patterns along the North American west coast.

As a result of this geographic reconfiguration, the cool California Current collapses and is replaced by a redirected branch of the North Equatorial Current, which now flows northeast into the Cascadian Sea and then northward along the Oregon coast. This warm current brings year-round heat and tropical moisture, transforming western Oregon’s environment. With no major topographic changes, existing features like the Coast Range and Willamette Valley trap heat and moisture inland, fostering an explosion of subtropical flora and fauna. Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis become overgrown, half-submerged jungle ruins — overrun by banyan-like trees, giant ferns, and invasive tropical wildlife.

Meanwhile, Washington State remains largely buffered from this transformation. Cold air masses continue to spill in from the North Pacific, and oceanic upwellings help retain a mild, rainy climate. The Columbia River Gorge becomes a dramatic borderland — a shifting, misty zone between Washington's evergreen highlands and Oregon's choking jungle lowlands. Migratory populations fleeing Oregon’s collapse seek refuge in the stable urban centers of Seattle and Spokane, while others adapt to life in the overgrown wetlands below.

The new Oregon is wild, wet, and hazardous — a place of stunning natural regrowth and near-total infrastructure collapse. Trade, travel, and communication require watercraft or jungle-adapted aerial drones. Native species have vanished, replaced by reptiles, amphibians, and tropical insects. What remains of the state is a loose network of river-bound settlements, canopy outposts, and ruins — some inhabited by scavengers, others consumed by the green tide.

Ah, ChatGPT...there are some things you do rather well, including saving me having to use too much brainpower in determining cause and effects and conditional changes on a global scale. Let's see what else you can give me...

In this transformed Oregon, the economy operates as a decentralized network of river-bound settlements and jungle-adapted enclaves, united loosely by a gold- and silver-based coin economy. These coins—recovered from sunken vaults, salvaged urban caches, or newly minted by metallurgist guilds using primitive smelters in ridge-top strongholds—form the backbone of trade. With traditional banking long gone, trust is enforced locally through reputation, alliances, and martial presence. Day-to-day barter remains common for essentials like food, cloth, or tools, but coins offer a crucial medium of exchange between disparate, culturally distinct regions or dealings with foreign merchants—especially those from Washington.

River trade is the lifeline of this economy, with shallow-draft skiffs and sail-powered barges connecting canopy settlements and overgrown ruins. Trade is risky and slow, but essential. Canoes and sailboats laden with dried foodstuffs, jungle-grown fibers, preserved herbal compounds, and reclaimed metalwork drift down swollen rivers, forming the economic veins of Oregon’s drowned interior. Communities specialize by ecological zone—some harvesting rare fungi and resins deep within the jungle, others trading in freshwater fish, insect protein, or exotic fruits adapted from the tropics. Metal goods, especially tools and weaponry, are in high demand and often fabricated from reclaimed urban scrap. The jungle’s rapid overgrowth buries and distorts salvage, so skilled "relikers" and ruin-guides command premium prices for both goods and knowledge. Coastal settlements on the Cascadian Sea act as hubs for trade with surviving territories to the south or the temperate highlands of Washington, though the journey is perilous and coin payments often include hazard premiums.

Inland, the presence of coin allows for the rise of micro-economies and even proto-states, often governed by guilds or protector clans. Some ridge-top strongholds mint their own coinage, sometimes mixed with religious iconography or clan emblems to assert sovereignty. Markets form near ruins, rivers, or at jungle clearings during seasonal festivals, where traders exchange exotic creatures, jungle spices, or relics for coins, favors, and survival gear. Without centralized governance, economic stability relies on dense webs of personal obligation, local codes, and networks of coin-backed trust. In this lush, chaotic Oregon, wealth isn’t just measured in gold—it’s measured in what you can trade, defend, or grow in the shadow of the jungle.

The most stable and high-value trade occurs at the northern border, where Oregon meets Washington across the Bridge of the Gods. The area around the Columbia River Gorge has become a militarized trade chokepoint—a mist-drenched boundary of civilization and wilderness. Here, Oregonian goods like tropical medicinal resins, rare pigments, giant insect chitin, and exotic spices are exchanged for Washington’s manufactured goods, preserved grains, and hardy vegetables. The Washingtonians accept Oregonian coinage in limited forms but prefer tangible trade goods. Caravans from Washington bring salt, steel tools, wool, and lumber, though access is tightly controlled, and tariffs are enforced by Washington border guards and mercenary guilds. Mutual dependency maintains a tense peace, and guild envoys or religious orders often act as go-betweens to enforce contracts and adjudicate disputes.

Well now! A little tweaking, a little editing, and I could turn this into a whole setting book for  Oregon...if I wanted to do that. Which I don't really because...it's Oregon. Also, because there's already a setting book for the Beaver State (Wampus Country is gonzo OD&D, and ain't half bad).

But all I need is a jungle. Which is why I'm content to let AI do my writing and research for me on the subject. To me, the most important thing is that the jungle is THERE (and where I want it). It's just something I like to have on hand when certain types of adventure pop into my brain.

My kids have never been to the
Yucatan...it would be a lot easier to visit 
Palenque if it was in Oregon.

Shrine Of The Demon Goddess

SO...last Wednesday I wrote about my tournament scenarios for the Cauldron convention, promising (more-or-less) that I'd release my con notes for the adventures, including the new scenario, Shrine of the Demon Goddess. Unfortunately, events conspired to make me late in delivering on that promise. 

Don't they always?

Well, better late than never. Here are the downloads:

Forbidden City

Shrine L1 Map

Shrine L2 Map

Shrine L3 Map

It's been a while since I've uploaded anything to MediaFire...please let me know if there are problems with the links.  The Forbidden City PDF contains all my tournament notes, including the notes for the first two scenarios; you will need an actual copy of I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City to make much sense of those (this would be the first five pages of the PDF).

Shrine of the Demon Goddess beings on page 5. Despite being three levels deep, it is only 27 encounters in total...it is designed for a short excursion (suitable for a four-hour tournament time slot). It IS possible for a group, given four hours of play time to dig out at least TWO of the substantial "pay drops" (I know...I've seen it in testing) but clearing the whole dungeon in such a time frame would be pretty close to impossible...give it a session for each level if you want to run it as a "standard adventure."

As usual, feel free to hit me up with any questions and/or comments.

OH...just by the way, I'll throw in a PDF of the pre-gens I brought to the tournament. Those who have a copy of I1 will recognize these as the 20 pre-generated characters provided in the back of the adventure module, though some have been modified to better work with the level of the scenarios given here:

Pre-Gens

Enjoy!

: )

Storming the Forbidden City

SO...

For the Cauldron convention, I decided I would run a number of scenarios based on the classic (TSR) adventure I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City, an AD&D (1E) module I've blogged about on more than one occasion.

There was, of course, a little impishness to my choice: the (main) convention organizer (the much esteemed Settembrini) is an outspoken critic of David "Zeb" Cook, author of Forbidden City. While I agree that there's plenty to criticize about Zeb's work, it's not ALL bad, and I'm trying, Ringo, to be a Good Shepherd these days...even when it's so darn hard not to be the overly negative 'Tyranny of Evil Men.'

[that's a 90s film reference for you young 'uns]

ANYhoo...I1. Great adventure (IMO) and one I hadn't run in a while. Also, fairly massive in scope (if sketchy in the details): a whole city full of potential danger and antagonists. Far too much for a 4-hour convention time slot...and, yet, the adventure as originally conceived was designed for tournament (convention) play.  The thought that struck me: can I rehab this thing and make it a showstopper?

Having decided to give it a shot, I hit upon the following strategy:

1. I would offer three separate, successive scenarios, all set in the Forbidden City.
2. Each scenario would "ramp up" in difficulty (expected level of participating PC).
3. Each scenario would present a different environmental/situational challenge, despite using the same theme.
4. Each scenario would offer enough reward ("treasure") to level up the presumed party, allowing players who wished to continue to play each successive scenario.

For the first scenario ("To Rescue A Prince") I used the original tournament scenario from the module (section "A" of the I1 publication). Section A consists of a linear map with 10 encounter areas, including several challenging set pieces. For this scenario, I changed very little of the original scenario; designed for six characters of levels 4th - 7th level, the original pre-gens actually average 6th level. So, I tightened it up by making sure no pregens under 5th would be allowed, made sure I had eight available, and upped the treasure take to ensure that even the 5th level PCs could expect to rise in level...should they survive and succeed at their objective.

I removed the sleep gas trap (it really doesn't make sense, and the reverse gravity field is enough as far as the "reasons" for its inclusion) and changed the bugbears to skulks, which I felt were a little more thematic given the jungle theme while retaining (more-or-less) the danger level (semi-invisible backstabbers are on-par with wookies that more easily surprise).  I previously wrote about the play-testing of this scenario, and found that four hours was just a tiny bit too short to get through, though I chalked that in part due to the party's wizard getting eaten by crocs in the first encounter and thus having some difficulty with the more populated encounters (tasloi and whatnot).

[unfortunately, even though the Cauldron party retained their MU (and, in fact, carried a second spell-caster...a fighter/magic-user) the convention group would still fail to make it to the final encounter in the four-hour time slot]

My second convention scenario ("The House of Horan") was also taken directly from I1. The wizard Horan is named as the mastermind behind the newly organized and ambitious raiding groups from the City; he resides with his apprentice in a well-kept, walled compound that contains his house, gardens, and more than a few guardsmen (bullywugs, leopards, and...*sigh*...bugbears). For a con, I set the adventure one week following the first, giving adequate time for the party to recover their strength and (as background/intro to the scenario), discover through careful scouting this "suspicious stronghold" in the midst of the ruined city.

Horan's house is quite a different scenario from the linear affair that is the original tournament adventure. It is, in fact, extremely open: a classic housebreaking situation, the PCs are given full autonomy to decide how they approach the thing. It is exceptionally dangerous, even for a party of 6th - 8th level PCs; the first time I play-tested, it resulted in a TPK. The second play-test wasn't much better, despite the PCs knowing (somewhat) what to expect...it's just very difficult to tackle a 12th level wizard in his home, if he's prepared for such a possibility with reasonable defenses. 

[the Cauldron players fared all right: a couple deaths, a couple zero-outs, but they managed to conquer the wizard while playing on the edge of their seats. It was a near thing...which is the way I like to run adventures, just by the way]

For the third scenario ("Shrine of the Demon Goddess"), I crafted an entirely new adventure: a three level, traditional dungeon of 27 encounters for 7th - 9th level characters. As readers might surmise from the title there is, in fact, a demon in the thing: a type V demon, inspired by (and foreshadowed by) the first encounter location of the tournament adventure:

"The walls of the alcove are worked with carvings of snakes and men in a pastoral scene and at its back stands a large statue of a snake-bodied, six-armed woman."

The adventure module, as published, has no real "base of operations" or headquarters of yuan-ti...something that's been pointed out by plenty of folks, along with a general "incompleteness" to the thing. But the very incompleteness provides plenty of potential for DMs/designers to add to the Forbidden City...which is what I did, creating a temple within a temple, complete with catacombs, remnants of the prior (pre-snake) religion/culture, and a Hell-like cavern section full of dretches and assorted badness, including a pool of inky black capable of transforming normal folks into snake-folk.

The City: lots of room for more lairs.

Good stuff, in other words.

Scenario three also has plenty of treasure squirreled away, at least three large pockets of it. When play-tested at home, my players found troves #1 and #3...the Cauldron players found #2 and, yes, it all turned out as decidedly deadly as a DM could ask for (if you're giving away big heaping piles of loot, there better be the potential for a decent body count). 

*ahem*

ANYway...as I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City is available at DriveThru for a grand total of $4.99 (PDF only...sorry), it's easy enough for people to see the bulk of my first two scenarios, including maps. As for the third scenario? Eh...I'll probably just make it available here on Ye Old Blog as a free download in the next few days...just as soon as I can get my maps scanned. And, yes, it will contain my notes/changes (especially treasure counts) for the first two scenarios. Look for that...mm...Friday, probably.

All right...that's enough for now. I'll talk some of the specifics of my Cauldron play experience in a future post.

: )

Final Exams

Friday evening I had my last round of playtesting for the upcoming Cauldron convention in Germany. Two weeks from now I'll be IN Germany, running 1st edition AD&D for a table of complete strangers.

Slightly daunting.

I wish I could give folks a complete session report, as I know most of my readers will probably NOT be at the con. But, I really don't want to put a bunch of spoilers out into cyber-space. Oh, but it's hard! It was so much fun! Here's what I can tell you:

As I (believe I) posted earlier, my initial intention was to run THREE time slots at the con, all under the working title Storming the Forbidden City.  The title comes from the old TSR adventure module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City (author: David Cook). For the first two time slots I have two scenarios, adapted (more-or-less) directly from situations and maps in the adventure. They're not exactly what you'd find in the module, and (for convention purposes) they're self-contained, designed to be accomplished in the four hour time slot.

For the scenario #3, however, I created an all new dungeon: still part of the Forbidden City, still connected to the first two scenarios, still with a "snaky" theme to it...but otherwise, all new. 

And, of course, I needed to test it.

So Friday I ran it for my players. A party of seven 7th level characters (an assassin, two fighters, a cleric, a magic-user, a thief, and a ranger) and one 4th level bard (6th fighter/5th thief). The result? They made it in, penetrated to the bottom-most level, fought five monster encounters (including a running battle), set off a couple of traps/hazards, found two of the largest treasure pockets (and looted them), and got back to the stairway out just as time was expiring.

One character deceased, one character zeroed out; over 174K in treasure experience (split seven ways). The biggest, baddest opponent in the dungeon: destroyed (with a bit of very good luck), and its head mounted on a spike (by the PCs) at the dungeon's entrance. Four of the survivors (including the bard and magic-user) leveled up. All-in-all, a fairly successful delve for my players...and they'd like to continue exploring the Forbidden City, going forward.

And perhaps we will. However, as these have been convention scenarios, and there aren't enough players to fill out the ranks needed (I have only three regulars at this time), there have been a passel of NPCs accompanying the group at every stage. And I think the NPCs (not henchmen, mind you!) have had enough at this point. They're ready to take their spoils and get back to civilization (well, Portland, if you can call that "civilization"...). Plus several party members (including Maceo's bard) have been inflicted with a terrible rotting curse, and since the cleric was once again killed (in about the most horrible death this group has seen at a table), and since they are "rich," and since they were rather fortunate...multiple times!...to escape with their lives...

Yeah, I think I'm going to be closing the book on I1...for the nonce. The party can re-equip and re-supply in the nearest town (and hire a few henchmen) if they want to continue exploring the ancient city of the yuan-ti.

Things I Learned (and needed modifications)

Surprisingly, it turns out my last statement on the prior blog post was very nearly a lie: they encountered almost ZERO yuan-ti in the adventure, despite there being rather a lot of them stocked in the thing. Which is kind of like going to the demonweb pits and not fighting demonic spiders in some way, shape, or form. Not sure that's acceptable. 

A more robust wandering monster table may be needed. The party was not one to dither in their decision making, but they did backtrack over long stretches multiple times, and while they went through a LOT of torches, they were largely untroubled by random encounters (though one at the end had a 45% of auto-ending a PC...she made her saving throw). 

The players have a bag of holding which makes the collection of large loot piles fairly straightforward. Unfortunately, NONE of the pregens I'm bringing for the convention do, which might be problematic for any players that show up at my table. The three scenarios I've written are scaled by level (#1 is for characters 5th-7th, #2 is for 6th-8th, and #3 is for 7th-9th). Though I anticipate a full table of eight players...just based on the logistics of the con, not MY "draw" (there aren't all that many games on the docket)...if the PCs don't have a way to gather treasure, it makes it hard to level up between scenarios. And lesser leveled characters are going to get gaffled.  I suppose the solution (which I've already arrived at) is make sure there are enough pregens (and replacement pregens) of the appropriate levels for each scenario. BUT since returning players are likely to want to use their own PCs (or the same pregen from earlier scenarios), leveling between sessions does become quite important.

Mm. I'll have to ponder on that. I'm certainly not going to just hand out free levels!

Which brings up a related note that I've had since my first session: what to do with players whose characters have died? Attrition is built into the adventures: it is expected that some characters will be lost along the way. When player characters have fallen (for example, in my last playtest, we saw six of eight knocked out of action with four killed outright), my players simply took over remaining NPCs in order to continue play. In a convention game with a full table (again, anticipated simply based on logistics), there aren't likely to be "spare" NPCs available. I suppose the trick is to allow new characters/pregens to "show up" as wanderers for the players running on empty. HOWEVER...will this throw off the scaled difficulty of the scenario? At SOME point, I want replacements to be unavailable...a trade deadline, of sorts. Certainly, upon reaching a certain level of the scenario (there are multiple levels) or when there's only a certain amount of time left...say, the final 20 minutes of the time slot. Or both (i.e. whichever occurs first). And perhaps there's a finite number to replacement characters available. Yeah...maybe a mix of all three of these things (time, level, number) will be used to set the limits.

*whew*  I have to say, I'm still worried. The players did everything just about perfect...including the route they took. Oh, they made a couple-three minor mistakes, but nothing catastrophic, and they had some exceptionally good luck: their chance of taking down the Big Bad (which could have easily accounted for half the party if not all of them) was exactly 1.75%, given the method they employed. Amazing. I actually half-assumed that most groups would exercise a bit more discretion (and still die horribly)...such was not the case, and the rewards reaped were well-deserved. 

Still, knowing when to "quite while ahead" is most definitely an acquired "player skill" and my players were ready to skeedaddle after that. Two more encounters dispatched on the way out, one more NPC slain, but...as said...they hit the exit right as the timer went off.

Would other players be as fortunate? That's the question. Is the scenario too difficult and my group just benefitted from some sweet dice rolling? Or is it easier than I anticipated and ANY bunch of halfway competent players would make out like bandits?

Well, I'm not going to have time to run another test, even if I had a second group of players (though I suppose I might try recruiting AB and Kris for a foray...hmmm). No, I think I'm going to have to let it stand as is...though with a bit more "beef" in the random encounters.

No, I think (at this point) what I have to focus on is getting my play-aids ready for the con: cheat sheets and monster rosters and lists of spells that include casting times and ranges for easy reference. Also probably need to curate the pregens spell lists a bit: for the play-test, I allowed the players to pick the MU's spells, but staples of low level play (sleep and charm person for example) are a lot less useful at this middle tier of D&D play. "X the Mystic" came in handy with a couple of his utility spells, but was otherwise ineffectual over the course of the session. That needs work.

All right, that's about it. This has been a pretty rough week for Yours Truly...going to relax for a bit, watch a little football, and decompress. More compression (I'm sure) will start tomorrow.

; )

Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome and appreciated. Thank you!

Good stuff lies below...

Another Forbidden Foray

Time is getting closer to my Germany trip, and what free time I've had (not much) has been spent writing/designing my adventures I plan on running at Cauldron. Just finished the third one, mmm, Sunday morning. That's the one that's cut from whole cloth, a completely new delve into the yuan-ti's "Holiest of Holies." Came to about 11 pages, not including maps, pregens, and play-aids.

But I haven't been able to test it. Still had to re-run adventure #2 for the con. I was doing that on Sunday for four hours (well, 3 hours and forty minutes). It's still a killer, but at least this time it wasn't a total party killer. Threw an extra NPC into the party (a 6th level paladin, Fairburne, complete with magic armor and frost brand longsword), and the party was STILL nearly done in: four out of seven survivors, two of whom were "zeroed out" (though they were stabilized at -1 and -3 respectively), and the other two in single-digit hit points. And this is AFTER the group had already made a run at the thing and knew (somewhat) what to expect. Yeah, it's a bit of a ball-buster.

Fairburne did not survive, having been reduced to something like -18.

[for folks who don't remember my original post on the topic, I'm re-writing/re-purposing I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City for the convention. The pre-gens and NPCs, including Fairburne, are all being taken from those included in the original module...although players are, of course, allowed to bring their own characters]

Still, a win is a win, and the survivors are all 7th level now (well, except for Olaf Peacock, who's a 6th/5th/4th level bard), which is the minimum level I pegged for my third scenario, a little something I call "Shrine of the Demon Goddess" (catchy, right?). But I have to come up with enough NPCs to round out the party, and I'm running out of module pregens. It's a damn shame Daniel the cleric died, as he probably would have leveled up, and a raise dead spell would have come in real handy. I've got Gavin (halfling thief), Marcella (ranger), and X the Mystic (magic-user) all ready to go, but the only cleric left on the roster is Orrem, a 6th level canon, and I just don't think that's going to cut it in an adventure written for levels 7th to 9th. I suppose I could just boost him to level 7 (and that's probably what I'll end up doing), in the name of expediency...the party can always give him Fairburne's plate mail +1.

And expediency is the key word, here. Because more than running short on characters, I'm running short on TIME. I've got a little more than two weeks before I'm hopping aboard Iceland Air, and I need to figure out just what sort of monster I've created for scenario #3. A fairly beefy one, even for eight 7th level characters, from the looks of it (though not one without adequate rewards). When am I going to get a chance to run another four hour adventure session with our busy schedule?

Hm. Okay, just noticed the kids are out of school Friday ("teacher retreat"). Let's pencil that in.

All right, all right...apologies for yet another "throwaway" blog post, but typing this stuff up helps me organize the thoughts running 'round my head. The kids were pretty stoked about the adventure. We go weeks, sometimes, without playing D&D because of our incredibly busy schedules, and we all forget how much damn fun it is. Oh, the pleading last night to fudge dice rolls was in high demand...the attempts at wheedling...and, yet, everyone came through the thing richer and wiser (if not exactly unscathed), and happy. And excited. And rarin' to play more.  All thoughts of Minecraft and Fortnite and stupid video game garbage gone from their heads...the kids got up this morning and all they wanted to talk about over breakfast and the drive into school was Dungeons & Dragons: how they did, what's going to happen next, when can we set aside time for our next game. 

Lovely and delightful.

Okay, I've got to get to my morning chores. More later.

No yuan-ti were harmed (nor encountered) in the
running of this adventure scenario. This
will NOT be the case in the next adventure session.

Con Games

Hope those who celebrated yesterday had a wonderful and happy Father's Day. Mine was pretty good. The fam is generally pretty great about catering to my every want (for a change), though when no one besides myself is up before 11am, you do feel a little "short-changed."

; )

Still and all, it was great because the main thing I wanted to do was play some Dungeons & Dragons. Or, as I put it to my family when they asked, eight hours of D&D played in two four-block sessions with a break in between. Because I had some pretty specific play-testing I wanted to do.

As I mentioned a while back, I'm going to Cauldron, "the OSR EuroCon," in October and my plan, as of now, is to run three sessions with three different scenarios. As of now, I have two of the scenarios written  (more-or-less) but I feel it's important to test them and fine-tune them...I don't want to just show up and run a bunch of off-the-cuff stuff and crap the bed. Best to have an idea how things are going to unfold, see where problem issues are, etc.  I'm paying too much money for those plane tickets not to give a solid effort.

Unfortunately, what with the lateness of our start yesterday (the kids are on summer break already, which means late nights and sleeping in), we were only able to get through the first session. And that was okay! Because not only did the play-test go well (which was important), the kids were enthused enough about it that they are quite excited to to part 2 at the earliest opportunity. Or (as my kids put it):

Diego: I didn't really think this was going to be fun but it turned out to be really good!

Sofia: Yeah, Paps, I thought it was going to suck dog poop but it didn't!

The adventures are set in the classic David "Zeb" Cook module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City. The first scenario is cribbed from the original tournament scenario, but tweaked and tuned for my purposes. Designed for five to seven PCs of 5th - 7th level, it is a fairly linear affair consisting of a dozen or so numbered encounters...which is about all you can expect to get through in four hours of focused play.

For our play-test, the kids broke out their 6th level PCs "Salamander" (elven assassin) and "Potter" (half-elf fighter). Neither of these characters had been used since last August (!!) because, while they had shown themselves to been fairly successful adventurers (knocking over both N1 and I6 and having last absconded with about 10,000 g.p. in owlbear eggs from an abandoned wizard tower), the kids had decided they wanted to create NEW characters that would not be subject to level caps...because of their particular class-race combinations, neither character expects to progress beyond 10th level.

[I *do* use Gygax's updated rule from Dragon #95 allowing single-class demi-humans a +2 increase to their natural level cap, though ONLY in the case of a class that could normally be multi-classed (like fighters). That's why Potter can expect to reach 10th level, and why Salamander canNOT expect to reach 12th level]

SO...since it's been 10 months since we used those characters, I updated their records with upkeep costs (10 game months passing when no active play otherwise occurring) along with their age records, etc. Before whisking the PCs down to the Oregon jungles, which is where the Forbidden City exists in my campaign world. Just what had been occurring to them while the rest of our campaign had been passing made very little difference...probably lost in a drunken haze of debauchery that is commonplace for adventurers after a successful score (see Conan the Barbarian for examples).

For the convention I am (of course) bringing pre-gen characters, taken directly from the list in the back of the original module. Since we only had two players in our game (Kieran, Maceo, and Winston presumably occupied with their own Father's Day festivities), I allowed the players to choose four of the six pre-gens to accompany them as NPCs. They chose Nasaldromus (5th level magic-user), Bruti (6th level dwarf fighter), Daniel (6th level cleric), and good ol' Olaf Peacock (a 1st level bard with 6th level fighting and 5th level thief abilities).

Timer on the clock was set and 20 additional minutes was granted for additional outfitting: swapping gear or purchasing additional equipment. The PCs had an extra suit of (dwarf-sized) Chain +2 that they gave Bruti to better his AC, and extra gear/weapons was procured and noted. I allowed the players a day to cast continual light on a pair of torches the day before starting on their adventure. 

[first "pro note" for the convention: we actually ended up running about 25 minutes over-time, so it's probably a good idea to have ALL pre-gens functionally equipped. That way minimal time will be lost in playing the session]

Nasaldromus was killed in the 2nd encounter area, which was kind of awesome (I mean dead-dead-dead). But it did leave the party without a magic-user for the rest of the session, which made several encounters MUCH harder/longer. That's good to know.

However, it brings up an important question: what do you do with players who get killed straight away? For us, it wasn't terribly important (Nasal was an NPC we'd only just met, after all) but at a convention this might be the character of a player who'd paid good money to sit down at the table. Is he/she just supposed to sit there for the next 3.5 hours watching?

[second "pro note:" have areas where new 'back-up' PCs can be introduced, seeded throughout the scenario]

There are at least three, fairly complicated fights in the adventure, consisting of multiple groups of opponents with varying abilities and tactics. Several of these include a vertical element to them, which adds further complication. In general, I've never been a DM to use miniatures or map grids in my AD&D games, instead making quick sketches when necessary or (with the kids) using Lego minifigs to show relative facing and placement of opponents, but this was pretty rough to run in actual play due to the time crunch. If we hadn't been pressed (pacing was brisk, for the most part), I would have preferred to calculate ranges (especially for missiles and movement) with more specificity, using right triangles, etc.

[third "pro note:" draw out area maps ahead of time; have scales and ranges pre-calculated and determine speed of climbing for all PCs based on armor and/or encumbrance. "Winging it" worked fine for our table, but at a con you never know what kind of stickler players you might have...best to be prepared]

The cleric was downed at the two-thirds mark...knocked down to -2 hit points, he nearly bled out (only being aided at -9). This meant no more healing for the rest of the scenario. Fortunately, the party members that remained had very good ACs (ranging from 1 to -1) and high hit points (40s+). But it was a close thing: the four remaining PCs were at 11, 12, 16, and 39 by the end of the penultimate encounter, and things might have ended very differently if the one of the quartet had blown his save vs. spells. 

The final encounter (only played after our time limit had expired) ended up being a cakewalk, though mainly because of streaky dice...Sofia rolled something like four 19s in a row and everyone was hitting for max damage, while my dice had run ice cold with nary a hit dispensed (and all damage rolls 1s and 2s). The players thought it was too easy, but mathematically it should have been very tight, especially given the shambling state of the remaining party members. Luck, which you can't really count on, had a huge impact.

While my initial thought was that an extra party member might be helpful in offsetting any streaks of "bad luck," on further reflection, I think that being able to 'sub in' new characters for downed PCs [see pro note #2, above] would accomplish the same end. All of those encounters get much easier with one or two extra bodies absorbing punishment.

All in all, a very good time. As I said, the players were very enthused...they'd said they'd like to continue playing I1 as a campaign game (i.e. open exploration) rather than in snippet scenarios designed for convention play. And I don't blame them: I1 is one of my all-time favorites of the classic TSR modules. 

But testing is important. I learned a lot of useful info from yesterday's play-test...stuff that will important when operating under the time constraints and more rigorous conditions of a con game. It's not that I'm worried a bunch of cranky Germans are going to leave me beaten and lying in a ditch. But I do want to make a good showing of myself...I care about my craft!

Anyway: it's been a while since I sat down for such a long session outside a convention. For the curious (and for my own memory), I make the following notes:

• Two PCs, four NPCs, average levels 6th (the bard counts as a 7th)
• 30 minutes prep (character selection, equipment purchase), 90 minutes play, 5-10 minute bathroom break, 110-115 minutes play. Game was "called" at that mark, one encounter short of the end. After (roughly) a couple hours break, we finished up the scenario in about 20-25 minutes.
• Total monsters slain (by hit dice): 44 (1 x22, 2 x8, 3 x3, 4 x1, 6 x6, 8 x3, 9 x1). Six combat encounters. Number of bugbears appearing: zero.
• Total treasure recovered: 42,400 g.p. (not counting enchanted items). 
• One NPC death; one NPC forced to retire prior to completion.

Not bad. Not bad at all, considering. Hopefully we'll get a chance to run Part 2 this week.

Writing Adventures

I got back into Seattle on Tuesday. My grandmother passed away yesterday (Wednesday); I got the call at the same time I was placing flowers on my mother's gravestone, one week after her burial.

Life goes on.

***

In addition to all the "real world" stuff I've got on my plate at the moment, I'm currently engaged in a crap-ton of adventure writing. I mean, a LOT.

The re-write/re-purposing of the I3-I5 Desert of Desolation series has been temporarily suspended. Not because it's not a great idea (I mean...I love it), that it's really not suitable (even as an open region of my campaign world) for exploration by characters under 3rd level or so.  And all my players are about to start over (Friday afternoon) with brand-spanking new 1st level characters.

TPKs have a way of resetting things.

SO, I need some low-level stuff to get them up to snuff. Because I've been busy, and because I needed a breath of fresh air, I took the time to comb through the racks and a game shop near my grandmother's house in Missoula. Shout out to Retrofit Games, which had an absolutely beautiful store and friendly/helpful staff, who were able to get me something sufficient for my needs (as well as great recommendation for a cheeseburger in town: Frugal's. Get "the Classic Fix"). 

What I got, was a 20 page DCC Lankhmar adventure module written by Michael Curtis called Grave Matters. I am on record as a "non-fan" of the DCC system (which I've played before, multiple times), but it's close enough to B/X...which is close enough to AD&D...that I can make it function with minimal work.

And I mean minimal. Curtis knows his stuff ("Duh," says all the people who own Stonehell Dungeon, etc. However, this is my first product of his so far as I know). For a measly $10, I got a book with TWO adventures (Grave Matters and Madhouse Meet), neither of which suck, and perfectly suitable for PCs of 1st and 2nd level. The treasure counts are even (well, almost) correct, which is the usual thing you find lacking in OSR games.

SO...yeah, Lankhmar-esque adventure is perfectly fine for my Bandit Kingdom Boise. And with a little x.p. under their belts, it should be a simple matter of slipping the group a treasure map to get them out into the desert...probably a nice way to leave behind past shenanigans.

But campaign stuff isn't the only thing for which I'm writing. Turns out I'm going to a game convention this year...my first since the pandemic...and even though it's not till October, I plan to be well-prepped for the three game slots I'm slated for. The con is called Cauldron, "the OSR EuroCon" and it's supposed to be a celebration of 1st edition AD&D that will play out over three days in Hessen, Germany. Fortunately, it is an international affair and so games will be run in English (the international language of tourists). 

Room and board...and beer...appears to all be included in the ticket price, but you have to bring your own books and dice, and I'm cognizant of my responsibility to represent the USA well (currently, I'm the only Ugly American on the docket). Because I am old and lazy, and because it is one of my most beloved adventure modules, I am re-writing I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City into something suitable for a three-part, con-style adventure series that...um...doesn't suck(?) too much (??). 

Con games are tricky: you have a few hours to get down to business, and (hopefully) provide a fair amount of game play, with a satisfying (or conclusive) end. Cauldron also has the additional challenge of being run with ADDKON rules (Germany's version of the FLAILSNAILS conventions)...which for me means that I'm not running these as one-offs but as adventures that will impact the PCs even after I've left their schönes Land (und bier) behind. No apocalyptic party-nuking scenarios, just good clean AD&D.

ANYway. It should be great, but I want to play-test those, too. And ideally, that will mean getting my current group up to 5th & 6th level by the end of the summer. Doable...but a tall order nevertheless.

Especially considering Prince of Nothing just announced his (third) annual NoArt-Punk contest. And, of course, I want to enter (again). And, of course, I want to put forth a good showing and build on what I learned in the last two NAP events. And THIS year, the theme is "high level" D&D, something that holds a special place in my heart. My last two entries (one of which was a finalist and got a place in the book) were both written for parties of 10th-14th level. I'm thinking this year's will be more in the 9th-12th level range, but I already have an idea for it and it's a little on the ambitious side: something on the scale of 60-some encounters instead of my normal 30ish. Which (to give you some perspective) would be around 50% larger than all three scenarios I'm writing for Cauldron combined. No small feat, especially considering I need to draw the maps and I suck at maps.

But NAP III isn't due till November 30th. Prince suggested I write it on the long flight back from Germany to Seattle. We'll see.

Yeah: a lot of adventure cobbling going on at the moment, some of it fairly ambitious. But working with monsters and traps and treasures and fantasy scenarios is a welcome respite from dealing with all the other "stuff" that's going on in my life at the moment. And these respites help keep me...mm...stable? Not sure the word I'm looking for ("grounded" ain't it). D&D helps let the pressure off; it's the valve that keeps the steam from blowing the kettle. I'm not sure if my life would function better (or differently) without it, but for right now I'm glad to have it.

Later, Gators.

Nostalgia Bias

Recently, I read a retrospective review of adventure module I1: Dwellers of the Forbidden City over at Reviews from R'lyeh. It was less than complimentary, stating in part:

I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is a module with a huge number of problems. In terms of its most basic design, it has a split personality between the tournament play elements (with advice how to run the entrance tunnels as a tournament, but not the means, since the module is not part of the part of the ‘C’ or Competition series of scenarios) and the sandbox aspect once the Player Characters are in the Forbidden City. The former is highly detailed where the latter is not, the former has the players pushed in one direction, whereas the latter does not. Now whilst at least one of the encounters in the tunnels makes sense, the actual city is underwritten, with little description as to its current state or background as to its origins or who its original inhabitants were, with only the bases for each of the factions receiving any real attention or detail. And of those factions, the Yuan-ti suffer from the same issue. The module also treats its NPCs badly, few of them being named...Further, even the one named NPC in the scenario who will readily come to the Player Characters’ aid, an Elf Magic-User who is the only survivor from a previous expedition, has an unpleasant manner which will only serve to at least annoy the Player Characters, if not completely drive them off...

Worse, I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City ignores the primary reason for the Player Characters to travel as far south as the Forbidden City—the treasure from the caravans. It is completely omitted from the scenario, leaving a motivation to be unfulfilled. And without that, once the chieftain’s son has been rescued, there remains little motivation for the Player Characters to stay in the city. Now, there are plenty of potential motivations and adventure ideas given at the end of the module, but these are not used in the module as written despite the fact that they are infinitely more interesting than the very basic ones of searching for treasure (which does not exist) and rescuing the chieftain’s son given at the beginning of the module. As a consequence of their not being written into the module, there are no sewer systems filled with jungle-ghouls, no lost temple of Ranet, no temple to tentacular thing from another plane, no spy network, no travel back to explore the city in its prime, and so on. 

The fact is, I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is begging for all of these—and more...

Long-time readers of this blog may remember me writing of Dwellers with glowing praise...I have said, more than once, that it's one of my favorite adventure modules of all time. On my list of most "inspirational" adventure modules (i.e. inspiring me to play D&D) I ranked it #2, just behind Queen of the Demonweb Pits. I likewise ranked it #2 on my personal Top Ten list of all time D&D adventure modules, just in front of Q1 and just behind White Plume Mountain (though I noted that I "preferred the flavor" of Dwellers to S2). I've run the adventure module probably four or five times AS WRITTEN...i.e. without any further development. Truthfully, I never had any need to develop it further, because every party that braved the thing ended up dead or on the run for safer, greener pastures.

In other words, the way I feel about Dwellers of the Forbidden City could be readily compared to the way many, MANY people feel about I6: Ravenloft. 

Here's the thing: the criticism RfR has of Dwellers is fair. More than fair...it's pretty spot on. When he writes:

Wolfgang Baur is right to suggest that the module is best remembered for its monsters...I1 Dwellers of the Forbidden City is neither a classic, nor does not deserve its revered status, and it certainly does not deserve to rate as high as thirteen on the list of greatest Dungeons & Dragons adventures of all time by Dungeon magazine for the thirtieth anniversary of the Dungeons & Dragons. As written, it simply is not that good, its tournament versus sandbox style of play giving it a split personality and its sandbox elements severely underwritten and underdeveloped in far too many places for the Dungeon Master to bring to the table and make playable without undertaking a great deal of development work.

...he's not wrong at all. When I've run the thing I had the same complaints: I just pushed hard on the "chief's son" premise, and ignored all the failings of the thing, because the adventure didn't last long enough for those failings to appear. The "competition entrance" is pretty much a linear obstacle course. If you ignore that most of the city is undeveloped, PCs can simply wander the streets until they find one of the (detailed) "faction areas" where the adventure suddenly continues. There is a ton of under-utilized, unrealized potential in the adventure...more, there are a ton of unanswered questions that really demand answers: the yuant-ti, the missing trade goods, timelines of the disparate groups interactions with each other, etc.

Lost cities! Snake people! Killer jungle plants! Hell, there's even an illusionist. I love this sort of thing. But my love of these things undermines my ability to look at the adventure critically and rationally, with the jaded, middle-aged (thus, experienced) eyes that I use for the other adventures I've analyzed (like Ravenloft and Dragonlance). My bias for the adventures I love...and that I have nostalgia for...is just as strong and, yes, irrational as what I see in others.

That's a good thing to realize. It is something I need to be cognizant of.

Anyway, I would disagree with pookie that Dwellers of the Forbidden City should only be considered a "classic" for the new monsters it introduces, or that it should be restricted from such a prestigious designation due to the work a DM needs to put in to make it playable. A classic (when used as a noun) is defined as:

a work of art of recognized and established value

and I think that, with regard to adventure modules, there must be a certain amount of "player mass" (i.e. individuals that have played the adventure) for it to be rightly called a classic. And as an adventure published at the height of the game's popularity...and being present on store shelves for years... I1 probably has that mass in a way that many latter day adventures simply do not. And I think that it has established its value in the entertainment it's provided. 

But I'm biased.

[Ravenloft could also be rightly called a "classic" by the same reasoning and, for the record, I never said Ravenloft was not; I simply said it wasn't a very good adventure based on the rule set for which it was written]

Loot The Music...Er...Body

When I say "I live in Seattle" I actually mean it (unlike some folks)...my home is about 3.6 miles south of the northern city limits. Seattle is a big town (or small city, depending on your POV) and trying to get scheduled for a Covid vaccine in town is tough to say the least. So it was that Saturday morning found me driving north on Interstate-5 to the Skagit County Fairgrounds vaccination site for an 11am appointment...about an hour's drive...to get my first Pfeizer shot.

One of the things I enjoy about the new car the family purchased 2-3 years ago, is the "satellite radio" subscription we got with it: instant access to good music based on genre depending on whatever mood you're in, and even if there's a lousy/annoying song on your favorite genre station, chances are you can find something good on one of your other favorites, without commercials. It's not PERFECT, but for road trips it beats the hell out of the old alternative of slugging away a ton of CDs or mix tapes that you've already listened to a gazillion times. Saturday was a loooong drive (as noted) and rather than listen to the usual hair metal stations I gravitate towards, I listened instead to a rebroadcast for Casey Kasem's American Top 40 from the week of April 21st, 1973. Like, the whole thing (minus commercial interruption). 

It was a good time, and one thing I noticed about the top pop hits from that week in history (the year I was born) was the songs tended to fall into three general categories: 1) songs that I'd never heard before that seemed to be "gimmicky" (like Funky Worm by the Ohio Players), 2) workman-like songs from established artists (both Neither One of Us from Gladys Knight and Call Me by Al Green were completely forgettable pieces), or 3) true classics that I have heard countless times over the last 47+ years including Killing Me Softly (Roberta Flack), Danny's Song (Anne Murray), Stir It Up (Johnny Nash), Love Train (O'Jays), Space Oddity (Bowie), and Drift Away (Dobie Gray).

And the thing that classics like Stevie Wonder's Sunshine of my Life or Steely Dan's Reeling in the Years have over songs like Skylark's Wildflower or the Stylistics' Break Up to Make Up isn't necessarily head-and-shoulders better musicianship or better production values. It's a combination of songwriting (lyrics and instruments) with interesting, memorable touches that makes a song stand out from what has come before. Some cats just have that "it factor" and you can hear it in the way the song has been put together and recorded...even if you don't like a particular song (I'm not a huge Stevie Wonder fan), you can appreciate why he's one of the all-time greats.

I say this by way of introduction to the band Loot the Body, who just sent me a preview copy of the new album Hex for review. Spoiler alert: probably not destined to be a classic.

Loot the Body is "the brainchild of singer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Levi Nunez." Nunez writes songs "based on classic D&D" and cites "proto metal" and "proto psychadelic rock" as his musical references. I explained to Mr. Nunez that I wasn't a music critic...I'm not steeped in the industry, I haven't the practiced vocabulary for the writing or the library of musical knowledge to draw upon...but he still said he'd appreciate me writing my impressions of his songs. Says the "music blogs" don't really know what to do with him. 

Okay.

Hex is a six song EP with each track taking its name and theme from a classic D&D adventure module: White Plume Mountain,  Dwellers of the Forbidden City, Castle Amber, Tomb of Horrors, Ravenloft, and The Keep on the Borderlands. I've had some previous exposure to Loot the Body through The Barrier Peaks Songbook, which to me seemed more like a fun little project/experiment than a serious attempt at...well, a serious attempt. The new EP shows, no, Nunez IS actually serious about this wedding of D&D and music...there's a lot of obvious effort here...and whether he's trying to carve out a niche for himself or this is "just what he does," it's certainly doesn't appear to be throwaway trash.

That being said, the first word that came to mind as I listened to to Hex was "sophomoric," despite this being his third effort (I only just discovered he has an earlier album, Random Encounters, which I haven't had a chance to hear). I actually dig on the concept of the album (the idea he was going for) but my overall impression is one of flawed execution, and the thought that the music could have benefitted from some collaboration, or a strong hand in the production/editing with regard to the songwriting itself.

Musically, Hex reminds me quite a bit of Blue Oyster Cult, and shares some of the issues I have with BOC, especially the vocals. I'm okay with BOC (I've seen them live in concert) but they only have three songs I care to listen to, and despite their talent, I find most of their music to be disappointing and forgettable. I'm just not a fan of wispy, gutless singing that takes few chances vocally or lyrically. That's probably too harsh, but (for me) I like my singing to stand out and apart from the other instruments, not just become a drone in the background. I have this problem with more recent bands like Muse and Radiohead, too, although the latter band makes up for it with layering and originality. Perhaps it's music that's designed to act as a soundtrack to the group gathering around the bong, without "harshing the buzz" or acting as a distraction...and, sure, that's "okay." Elevator music is okay, too...in an elevator. But, man, it gets old after a (very short) while. 

Nunez does have musical chops, but his singing talent doesn't stand out, and his instruments...at times creative, at times highly derivative...suffer on most tracks from composition. See, this is the part where me NOT being a music critic fails me: I don't have the words to describe it. Often, he fills up the song sheet with lyrics withOUT musical breaks, rushing to get the words in, rather than letting the ear rest from the drone and just groove into the hooks and melodies. There are parts in every song where the ear wants a break from the singing...and gets none (or not enough). The bridges are too short. Another verse is needed instead of another repetition of an overlong chorus. Things like that. 

Lyrically the songs are hit-and-miss. To ME...an old school D&D guy...some of the songs are especially grating when they lift whole swaths of background text from the adventure modules from which they are derived. The album is at its best when Nunez goes "off script" with his lyrics...writing about the feelings and actions of adventurers in the dungeon, rather than the dungeon itself. 

I've listened to every song on the album multiple times. For me, the best of the bunch are Dwellers in the Forbidden City, Castle Amber, and Tomb of Horrors with Dwellers being my favorite track on the album. Castle Amber has some of the best lyrics on the album, but is scattered in its musical themes, and needs tightening. Tomb would be pretty good (despite some fairly derivative musical hooks) but suffers from the aforementioned issue of arrangement/composition...too bad, because it has one of the best bridges/choruses on the album.

White Plume Mountain, and Keep on the Borderlands are just heartbreaking (or embarrassing, depending on your point of view). When you have one of the worst villain names in the history of D&D ("Keraptis" sounds a bit too much like "crap") you don't spend the entirety of the lyrics on the dude and his history in the module's "background" section, and nothing about the adventure itself (what? no mention of Blackrazor, Wave, and Whelm? Come on). Definitely NOT the song to lead off the EP. TKotB isn't quite as bad, and is fine sitting at the end of the album as coda...just wish it was more than adventure background. 

Ravenloft, like the adventure it's based on, is just gimmicky in tone. It feels like the worst of BOC and irritates me every time I've tried listening to it (it's a struggle to listen to the track for more than two minutes,)...and yet it's the ONLY track that has a decent musical interlude (sans vocals) in the middle. Unfortunately, while it may be the best composed track on the EP it has an incredibly annoying chorus. Ugh.

Should you buy this album? Mmm. There's definitely worse musical projects to throw money at. Like anything produced by Pitbull. AND if you're a fan of droning, stoner rock...especially if you're tickled by themes inspired by classic D&D adventures...then, sure, yes. Because chances are, that's the only way you'll be getting a chance to hear these tracks. I don't think you'll be hearing these songs on the radio any time in the near future. 

And as I come to the end of this review (marveling at how any sane person would ask me to express my honest opinion of their work knowing how caustic and negative I can be..."gutless?" really?) and I finish listening to Hex for what must be the 10th time, I find myself coming to the conclusion that the best track on the album, despite its flaws, is Tomb of Horrors and not Dwellers of the Forbidden City. Even though I prefer the rock hook and lyrics of Dwellers, Tomb is the better song...Dwellers is just too short, needing more time to unwind, gel, and melt into your mind. Plus, Tomb's got the better, hookier chorus; I'll probably be humming it the rest of the day.

All right. That's enough of that.

Loot the Body's new EP Hex is scheduled for release June 4th and can be found on Bootcamp and elsewhere.