HELLWALKERS 2x20 Questions

This isn't really relevant but I made it and I'm proud of it

Skerples did this once over at Coins and Scrolls. I thought it was a fun way to flesh out a setting, so now I'm answering these 40 player-facing questions for Hellwalkers. Some of these answers may yet change.

JEFF RIENTS QUESTIONS

1. What is the deal with my cleric's religion?
The Clerics of the Immovable Saint venerate Saint Seymour, who defeated the Inexorable Beast and then ascended to the heavens. You can play one. You might also play a Paladin of the Voice, directly speaking the Authority’s will, or a cultist for a randomly generated minor god.

2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment?
The towns Stones (O03) and Bones (C05) both have standard adventuring gear.

3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?
The blacksmith Edith in the town Stones (O03) handles custom orders without much fuss.

4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?
The Wizard Gladice of the First Hellwalkers was the mightiest wizard in the land before the invasion. Now, they say she’s immortal, and hides out in her lab somewhere in the jungle.

5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land?
Paul of the First Hellwalkers was the greatest warrior in the land during the invasion. Now, they say he roams the southern badlands, cursed to hunt demons until all of them are slain.

6. Who is the richest person in the land?
Lord Bones of the town Bones (C05) has the most wealth as a consequence of his tight grip on the town. He pours most of it into military defenses and raids.

7. Where can we go to get some magical healing?
There is no magical healing. Food and a good night’s rest are pretty powerful healing tools, though.

8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?
Poisons, diseases, level drain, and alignment change are unlikely to come up. Curses, lycanthropy, and polymorph have specific cures. Undeath is cool enough that you probably won’t want a cure. Rumor has it that the Revenant Kraken (Q01) can bring someone back to life for a final mission.

9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?
There aren’t any magic guilds, but you can get elemental control tattoos from Lily in the town Stones (O03).

10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?
There are experts in the towns Stones (O03) and Bones (C05). People in the wilderness have more practical knowledge and local news.

11. Where can I hire mercenaries?
There are many aspiring demon-slayers in Stones (O03) and Bones (C05).

12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?
Lord Bones keeps a tight grip on the town Bones (C05). With a permit, you can carry your weapons, cybernetics, and magical abilities more openly, but Bones is not a trusting man.

13. Which way to the nearest tavern?
The taverns in Stones (O03) and Bones (C05) are hotspots of adventure and commiseration.

14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?
Demons. So many demons. The Demon Shark that ate Three-Finger Thaddeus’ other seven fingers is still alive somewhere.

15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?
There are constant skirmishes with the demons who invaded 100 years ago, and your whole deal as aspiring HELLWALKERS is that you’re trying to save the world.

16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?
There are pit fights in Bones (C05). You can earn money and--more importantly--respect, but there isn’t much fabulous cash floating around in town.

17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?
Your goal is to plumb the secrets of the demon invasion and save the world.

18. What is there to eat around here?
Regular fare. Meats, grains, vegetables, fruits. Most of it is farmed within 12 miles of the towns.

19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?
The most legendary treasure of all is the Crow’s Chime, said to be in the Pit of Flame (B07), which can turn back time to before the demon invasion.

20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?
The Pit of Flame (B07) and the Citadel (I08) probably contain at least one enormous, dangerous thing each, and plenty of treasure.

I made this too. It's a phone background

SCRAP PRINCESS QUESTIONS

1. Is there weaponized Squid?
There are demon squids, naturally, and if you can think of a way to weaponize regular squid, go right ahead.

(follow up questions are below)  Can I start with one? How much are they? Can I have one as a pet/horse/best friend? Can I play one? Can I dual wield them?
You can’t start with one. Regular squid are pretty cheap in Stones (O03). If you play a Wizard, you can call for a familiar, and if you do it in the right spot you can get a squid. There’s not a squid class I’m happy with, so you can’t play one. You can hold two regular squid at once but I’m not sure I would describe that as wielding.

2. Is there undead robots?
Uh, yeah, cause that’s cool as hell.

follow up questions involve the nature of consciousness and the existence of the soul in your campaign and can I play one? or have one as a pet or a gun that shoots them?
Sapient things have souls. Lots of them get caught up in the new pseudo-hell on Asphodel. You can play the Ghoul class and buy some cybernetics if you want. You can try to install cybernetics in an undead pet, too, if you end up with one.

3. Do Icebergs walk across the land ?
There aren’t any icebergs in the area of Asphodel you’re in.

can I be from one? Is godzilla frozen in one? Can I play a godzilla?
Since there aren’t any, you can’t be from one and Godzilla isn’t there. Playing Godzilla is a good idea for a different campaign.

4. What do birds know?
They know what the weather will be.

(no further questions)


5. Does medicine work like it does here but no-one knows CPR or does it work like a cartoon so I cure amnesia with more head injurys or does it work like medieval euro people thought it did with demons in your teeth?
Medicine works more or less like real life with a couple sci-fi advancements, most notably in cybernetics.

Do I start with demons in my teeth? Do I know CPR? Can I invent CPR? Can I give myself powers with additionally organs? What planet is in ascension in my spleen midmorning?
You don’t start with demons in your teeth; there’s enough of them outside already. You know CPR (so you can’t invent it). You can absolutely get powers with additionally organs. The planet Charybdis looms large above the moon of Asphodel, and the baleful red moonlight of Hell itself shines from its spot in the sky some nights.

6. I want to play a hobbit but really I'm the fleas controlling the hobbit. Where is that in the book?
You can’t play the fleas controlling the hobbit, but you can play a Klyntar, which is basically the same thing.

Could I take over a new guy with my fleas? Or another players guy?
The Klyntar class can take over new guys temporarily. You can’t take over other players, though.

7. How much could I rent my body out to spirits before I lost control of my character?
What are the names of the spirits? Are they cool?
A lot! That’s basically what playing a Wizard is. The spells do have names, but they won’t tell until you know them really well. They’re super cool.

8. What level do I have to get my character to before I am the g.m?
You probably don’t want to be the GM. It’s a lot of work. Character level alone won’t get you there.

Can I half be the g.m at an early level? What about when you leave the room?
GMing is an all-or nothing affair. If you stage a GM-coup when I leave the room, you’ll have to beat me in single combat when I return.

9. What is the dumbest thing I can spend my money on?
Uninteresting cosmetic tattoos. Get interesting cosmetic tattoos instead.

no dumber than that but cool. Like a pet with a pet with a weapon? Can pets dual wield?
Cool, interesting tattoos. Pets without hands (most of them) can’t dual wield.

3D Modeling is fun because neither God nor Man can stop me

10. How ugly can my guy be? Like Can I basically be a walking fish?
Your character can be as ugly as you want.

No wait I wanna be a walking fish. What is the reverse scuba technology like in this world?
You could be a sharkling. They breath fine in the air, though.

11.The lamp oil? Is that like cooking oil, kerosene, white spirits or napalm?
How much can I buy of it?
It’s like cooking oil. You can buy the stuff in barrels.

12. How does physics work in this world?
More or less like in real life.

What makes the planets stay up? Are there planets? Is it elves? Can I play an elf from another planet? Does everything work like how we though it did in the past? Can I discover stuff and pass it off as a magic? Is possible to use the scientific process to organise the concepts of magic?
Gravity keeps the planets and moons up. There’s one main planet, the gas giant Charybdis, which Asphodel and many other moons orbit. The world is advanced enough technologically that you can’t pass off most real-life knowledge as magic. You can absolutely apply the scientific process to magic.

13. Can I start with weapon hands?
There’s a couple classes that start with unarmed attacks, and you can get cybernetic weapons after you start playing, but otherwise no.

What about crab claws? Can I play a crab with human hands? Can I have one as a pet? Do they live on a different planet? Can we go there?
If you get a mutation, you might end up with crab claws. You can’t play a crab with human hands, it wouldn’t work well with other human-sized characters. If you play a Wizard, you might get one as a familiar. They may or may not live on another planet or moon, but without a rocket you can’t go there.

14. What cultures approve of cannibalism?
None of them.

What about if we are super rich? Aren't rich cannibals be default , I mean if you think about it? How is the class struggle here anyway? Is there a Karl Marx? How receptive are people to the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism here?
Rich people can be cannibals, and they are kind of the default, aren’t they? Struggle here is mostly framed around demons at the moment. There is not a Karl Marx. People would be very receptive to the ideas of anarcho-syndicalism if you could stop or reverse the ongoing demon apocalypse.

15. Can my character not be real , but a hallucination of another character?
But I still wanna be able to do stuff. What are the stats for that?
You know, I’ve seen a couple classes with this premise and I’m not quite happy with any of them. I’ll let you know if I get something I like.

16. Which is the rome but with lava fire country in this world?
There’s plenty of lava fire to go around. Some of it resembles Rome.

What about the ice circus country? Can I have a pet from there?
There are arctic wastes in the northwest. You can get a pet from there.

17. Can I invent an insect?
Sure.

as a player like right now I tell you an insect and you put it in the game? Or as a character? Can my spells be insects that then exist in this world after I cast them? Can I play an insect who is actually a spell cast in this world? What about as a pet?
Yeah. You can’t play your insect. Spells are already sapient and spend some time frolicking after casting. Again, I’ve seen some classes for playing spells, and I’m not quite happy with any of them. Wizard familiars are a lot like spell-pets.

18. Is there reverse fire?
Not really. There’s lots of regular fire, though.

What about reverse water or earth? What do they wear there?
Neither of those things either.

19. How much money can I make inventing siege engines?
There’s nobody with the resources to really pay for brand new siege engines. You can try to use them to aid you on your quest, though.

Can I play a siege engine? In what ways are animals used in siege engines?
You can’t play a siege engine, but you can try to get one. Animals are used to haul siege engines, and also any other way you can think to use an animal in a siege engine.

20.What is the most significant tree to the economy of the starting place?
Oak trees. They're used to build structures on top of concrete ruins.

Is it really a tree or maidens stitched together? If I play a maiden do I get spells or do people that worship me get spells but only if I'm mad at them?
It’s really a tree. Spell-sharing is a good idea for a class, but I don’t have anything concrete for that yet.

Halloween in the Deep Carbon Observatory: a Challenge, a Session, a Debriefing

First: 

This is not a review. I like Deep Carbon Observatory a lot, and I recommend it if you don't have it. Most of the evaluation bits of this post focus on stuff that went wrong with the module rather than stuff that went right; that’s more due to what I tried to do with it than the quality of the thing itself. This post is more about planning out a session with DCO and reviewing what happened.

You can buy it here. The PDF is $10.00; the softcover is $13.30. 

The Setup: 

The Challenge:
I have four hours to run a Halloween oneshot for a group that normally plays combat-focused 5e. This is the opportunity to give the players a taste of wonder instead of spending four hours fighting through four rooms.

The Module:
Deep Carbon Observatory, specifically the final dungeon--the Observatory itself. It's an ancient ruin full of lethal treasure. A cruel band of NPC adventurers--the Crows--stalks the party.

The System:

You can download the version I used for the oneshot here. It's short, just 7 pages long, and covers character generation only. 

I'm working on a hack that combines Into the Odd mechanics with GLOG classes. This version is, like Into the Odd, classless, so there's way more Into than there is GLOG, but I'm going to keep working on it. The Failed Career table is based on James', and the Quirks table is a modification of one I collaborated on with the OSR Discord, which Saker Tarsos instigated and posted on his blog.

The Plan:

1. Players generate their characters. Hopefully a half hour or less. Could be ten minutes if people arrive on time. 
2. Read starting blurb about ancient kingdom with great powers, do best possible Cate Blanchett impression. 
3. The players start outside the observatory proper. They were headed to Carrowmore; it was flooded. They ventured upriver to find the source of the flood. They were not the only ones (stragglers as replacement PCs + Crows). Eventually, they arrived here: A deep, black pit, with mirrored towers surrounding it, perfectly dry. At the bottom is a gate. Cue the music. 
4. Run the observatory proper. The Last Thing is in room 39, as suggested. The Crows harass the PCs and try to steal their stuff. Hopefully they release the Last Thing and die horribly. 
5. In the event of TPK before session end: Run Isles of the Dead (this step is implicit in all my sessions). 
6. In the event that the players actually survive the Observatory and lose the Crows and the Last Thing, they can venture toward Carrowmore. 

They are not as spooky if you kill their friends before meeting them (Scrap Princess)

The Crows: 
Hooloch can reload and fire on the same turn and gets two melee attacks. Zolushika has a derringer (d8, exploding 6-8, 1-in-6 reload, melee range, last resort). The Snakewood Staff takes 1 Max HP/use.
They arrived a few hours before the PCs, opened the gate, scouted out the first room, then left and waited for someone else to come by and venture down. They will harass with zombies and special arrows every night, or attack in the Observatory if they see an opportunity.


All of that was written before I ran the session. No plan survives contact with the players.

I don't really want to do a room-by-room session report, so just take this player map instead

The Debriefing: 

In Summary: 

1. Into the GLOG is a solid foundation
2. I’m bad at horror
3. The Observatory is not suitable for a single 4-hour Halloween Oneshot
4. All the talk of randomly generated abilities encouraging player ingenuity is absolutely correct

Self/System Evaluation: 

1. The Character Generation Packets (the Into the GLOG document above) were a resounding success. I printed out six copies and put them on the table; each player had their own. We were able to start playing in just a few minutes, and the characters were fairly interesting. The players definitely read the Player Advice page, although I don’t think they processed it fully. 
2. I’m happy with HP calibration. Monsters get HD*8 HP and each “level” of Armor grants 1 Damage Reduction (see the rules doc for player HP). Monsters felt tough without taking forever to kill, and players were clearly in danger (two died, there were a bunch of lost fingers and one lost hand) but not unfairly so. I’ve struggled with balancing monster and player toughness for the entirety of my time GMing OSR stuff (about the last year), and this system was the first to feel really good. 
3. I tried classic “both sides roll a d6, whoever rolls higher goes first” initiative, and I think I still prefer the GLOG style of “everyone rolls an initiative check; anyone who succeeds goes before the monsters.” I’m already fairly lenient in terms of allowing players to ambush things, so having every player act at once even in regular combat is too swingy for my tastes.  
4. I don’t really know how to handle players asking to attack things outside of combat yet. I had them just roll for damage like regular Oddomatic attacks, which worked out okay, but didn’t feel great. I probably should have allowed the players to just execute the guy in the Razored Lock, but I had them roll for damage twice instead, which was weird. Screwing with the ooze automatons led to a couple of similarly difficult rulings on “fighting without entering combat”: How do I handle the automaton grabbing for a jar out of a backpack? How about players shooting the jar out of its hands? What I did was have the player make a STR check to avoid being grabbed, and when they failed I had the automaton just take the jar out of their backpack, and that felt alright. When they wanted to shoot the jar out of its hands, I just said “you shoot it and it shatters,” but in retrospect I should have given it “Damage Reduction 3, HP 1” or something to model the automaton trying to protect it. 
5. I forgot to implement reloading for pistols, which in theory makes them a decent chunk more powerful than regular melee weapons and much stronger than bows, but in practice--in the context of a oneshot where players didn’t have the opportunity to shop--it didn’t really matter. People who started with guns used them; people who started with bows or daggers used those. 
6. I’m not confident enough in sad/scary things to run them well. Specifically, I feel awkward describing things seriously instead of in a lighthearted tone; I’m not confident in my descriptive abilities. Hopefully I'll be able to practice this and it'll help. 
7. Using a speaker for music didn’t work out very well; we were playing in a room with 5 other groups (it's a large club), so the background noise basically forced me to keep the music down in order to be heard. The playlists were also a bit short. 20 minutes of exploration music probably isn't enough. 

Cane Threadington, his argumentative tattoo of his ex-wife, and his blood, which is spiders

DCO Evaluation:

1. The Observatory itself isn’t really scary. I know that information is in the module, but I foolishly thought I could make it scary and it wasn’t. It’s a series of rooms full of great dangerous toys and NPCs, but without the context of the trip upriver and the dam and the lakebed I don’t think it had a properly eerie feel. Player feedback indicated that, too; there were a couple things that were a bit creepy, but the players mostly just attacked them. They didn't reach the Last Thing. 
2. The Observatory itself is too long to run in a oneshot, at least for me. We got a bit less than halfway through in about 3.5 hours of play. They explored most of the right stalactite, ending at the Book Elf Woman. 
3. The players killed the guy in the Razored Lock and the mushroom dudes, which may have damaged the horror feel early on. 
4. My mapping player was able to map the vertical dungeon fairly well, but I think the players' vision of the space they were in was harmed (I’m not good enough at description to improvise the horizontal layer, I don’t think). 
5. As far as I can tell, the Observatory does not/should not have random encounters. Without random encounters, I didn't think to track light-time, and without tracking light-time I didn’t think to track light-radius, which is itself made worse by DCO’s vertical map. This was a oneshot, so ultimately all of that was fine or even good, but I think it’s still important to note that all of those concepts are strongly linked. I need to consider them together in my regular campaign. 
6. My players LOVED the scales. They spent maybe about an hour real-time goofing around with them. They used them to identify ghar’s crossbow bolts, figure out their own character traits, compare how cool two PCs were (had to be settled by IRL arm wrestle), assess the magicalness/dangerousness of various objects, and probe the moral opinions of the scale (they learned that it doesn't think very highly of souls or freedom). 
7. They obsessed over the Cervit ceramic plates for a while without discovering what they actually did, and they didn't think to ask NPCs what they did. 
8. I ran the Crows in a somewhat forgiving way, since with Oddomatic attacks and a party used to direct-combat 5e the players would have just been crushed. They were able to ambush and kill Ghar and Zolushika, but the other two are still at large. The players were a little bit creeped out, but without the history of the journey upriver I don’t think the Crows were anywhere near as scary. 

Roxas Carter, Pirate King, who can mix oil and water, with an animated zombie hand taped to his right stump, wearing a crabclaw over that, wearing a shield, holding a magic arrow. There's another guy borrowing his eyepatch. And he has viking horns. And two peg legs. And a gun. Honestly, there's a lot going on here. 

Player Stuff:

1. Using the Scales to identify Ghar’s crossbow bolts. They were able to get keywords like “hallucinations,” “ensaring,” and “scrying”
2. Using the quirk “you can mix oil and water” to mix oil into the water-based automaton oozes and burn them for lots of damage
3. Ghar shot one of the players with his eyeball-seeing arrow, and then that player took another player’s eyepatch and put it over that eye for no reason in particular, allowing them to ambush the Crows. They then found the mirror, displaying fabric (they thought it was the inside of a pocket), and then later when they checked on the player’s eye I told them that the mirror was showing what he saw (over the course of a couple exchanges). They were amused that they had accidentally thwarted the spying attempt.
4. When they found the alien plant biospheres, the only player in the room said “I drop it on the ground at my feet.” 5d6 damage, Save for Half: They lived through that incident with 2 STR (and some lost fingers) but later died.
5. Welded automaton fingers to the iron palms of the person who dropped a bomb on themselves. 
6. Animated a zombie hand, tied it to the stump of another person who lost a hand, put a crabclaw on top of that, and put a shield on the whole thing
7. Two characters died during direct combat with the silk golems/silk tapestry, because they basically just traded blows and lobbed alien plant biospheres (and rolled poorly).
8. One of the players—someone new to TTRPGs—walked in like a zombie, and said “I feel like crap, guys, so I might leave early.” As the session went on, however, she perked up, and played the whole time. Furthermore, she was one of the people whose character died, and after the session was over, she said “I really liked switching characters in the middle.” The OSR Works™.

Left to right: Uliczny Magik, Sometimes Invisible Street Magician; Black Brady Barnacle Butt, Iron-Palmed Pirate (Deceased); and "Tinman" Smith, Telekinetic Forester. There were some other characters, but these are the ones with art. 

Plans for the Future:
So, this group is probably not coming back to DCO. We normally play 5e with a different DM, and we only have a few sessions left, so we're probably just going to keep playing through that campaign.

If I run DCO again in the future, I’m going to expand my music selection, run it in a quieter room, and run the entire module. If I run another Halloween oneshot, it'll probably be something campy rather than scary.

Otherwise, I’m going to keep working on Into the GLOG, write up some classes, and go back to running non-horror stuff with my regular group.

It turns out that posting weekly is too often. Things will be sporadic.  If you want to hear about stuff early, hang out on the OSR Discord.