Dark Days in Whorle

After my successful little adventure I thought perhaps I might go on another solo adventure. This time I opted to use my go-to system, White Box FMAG. I grabbed a village map from the blog here (was drawn for the Midderlands zine but I never ended up fleshing it out). Thinking up a quick way to get tons of small and nearby dungeons I could explore, I grabbed my Barrowmaze complete book. And off I went.

I hashed together a few locations from my partial work on the Whorle legend:
1 - Tadsworth Inn
2 - St. Jahn's Almshouse cathedral
3 - The Goat’s Ruse (Store)
4 - Mayor's home, also Brokehill Winery

I rolled up three characters the old fashioned way by the rules and ended up with a human fighter, human cleric and a halfling thief. I even used 3x5 cards! Wooohooo old school!

Then I drew up a quick hex map and decided to drop in a mist-shrouded swamp in a low land between the ridge Whorle sits upon and mountains to the north and east.

You can read my cryptic notes but essentially we headed out of the village of Whorle early in the am and travelled approx 3 or 4 miles into the swamps. Our group searched for two hours before they located a barrow mound, I randomly determined this was barrow 52 (if you are following along in the book). 

This was a sealed barrow, so I made up some quick rules to cover that, giving the sealed doors HP (2d6) and every turn we attempted to open would 'do damage' equal to d6 for each person working on it. Since two of the characters had crowbar....something my old group discovered to be very useful...I rolled a d6 for each for every turn they spent working the door. With a couple of lucky rolls, the party was able to make quick work and soon the stairs disappeared into the darkness before them.

Lighting their torches, Gorn led the way into the depths. The first chamber had a partially collapsed wall, the party searched but could find nothing of interest. The walls has ancient etchings with faded and chipped paint displaying grey snake-like creatures. Amara shivered, she hates snakes!

Brave but cautious, the party listens at the door in the western wall and hear nothing. It is locked but with a good roll our thief manages to unlock the doors just as two zombies burst forth and surprise the party!

I am using simple wooden pieces for the characters (they are color coded to their character sheets). For the baddies, I am using small mini glass tiles I picked up at Hobby Lobby.

One nails Gorn for a serious blow while the other hits Amara! This is not looking good. The next round they win initiative again but luckily both miss, Gorn follows with another whiff but Amara steels herself and calls upon her deity to banish these foul creatures, rolling a 20! Tim sends one to hell with his sling. Then we tie init, the zombie misses but Gorn smashes the creature with his axe. 

I am allowing the "Binding Wounds" optional rule on page 39 so Gorn and Amara gain back some of the damage they have sustained before we continue.

A sarcophagus lies here, already open, perhaps the zombies once called it home but a large chest sits just in front of it. Timbal begins inspecting it but fails to listen, Amara though happens to listen (I rolled a Wisdom check to see if she might think of this) and hears to the weird clicking inside. Thinking this might be a trap of some sort, the party covers their mouths with clothe and stand to the side while Tim attempts to pick the lock. Rolling a 1, he manages to easily pick the lock but the Clockwork Cobra inside leaps out (randomly) striking Gorn for 1hp of damage! It wins imitative (man we suck!) but luckily misses this round. Gorn and Amara both smash this thing and it lies in pieces at the end of the round. Timbal's eye grow wide when he looks in the chest and sees 700gp inside! They are rich!

The party decides it might be smart to rest for the remainder of the day and night. The party manages to use their rope to secure the door to chamber 2 and settle down hopefully for a quiet night. They take turns on guard duty to ensure all have decent rest. I roll for a random encounter once for the rest of the day and twice that night, only getting a success on one night roll. A pair of Coffer Corpses wander into Chamber 1 and try the door a few times but are unable to overcome the rigging. 

The party wakes in the morning, rested, suddenly wealthy, but still inside a barrow.....

Mere Anarchy playtest!

Dirk Stanley released the rules-lite game Mere Anarchy(https://mereanarchyrpg.blogspot.com/) a few weeks ago and I have been itching to give it a go. Tonight I finally had a chance to do so. 

First up, Character Creation. Quick and simple, I used the random tables to create Brenor the Brave and Amara the Mage.

(note the picture was taken AFTER the adventure, so you can see the HP damage as well as the treasure they recovered in the dungeon)

Just wanting to give the rules a test run, I decided to just grab my Dungeon Deck and get going. I quickly 'houseruled' that random encounters be a 1 in 6 every hour. Then off we went!

I am not going to give a play by play but it went pretty well and made me quite nervous a few times that Brenor was not going to make it. MA is dangerous.

I drew the cards and explored the dungeon, using the D30 DM Companion to determine encounters including an ogre, a giant centipede and a group of goblins. That damn centipede just about got us. Luckily Amara was able to fire off her spell and saved the day.

Overall, I really liked MA. Given it is rules lite there are times when I had to use judgement and figure out how to deal with things. Traps for example, I simply used the included Basic Mechanic and determined how difficult it was to find the trap. Along the lines of the rules, I had traps cause one damage.

To determine the 'level' of Difficulty Score I used a d6, on a 1-3 the DS was Easy, 4-5 the DS was Medium, and on a 6 the DS was Hard. I also used this to determine how hard it was to locate Secret Doors, then rolled for each character to see if they could find the door.

To come up with creatures after I determined what the encounter was, I used the MA Monster rules to stat them.

(You can see where I counted down the damage caused by the PCs during the battle)

After the centipede, my heroes decided to rest a night so Brenor could recover one hit point, which was smart because the final room would have killed him. In the last encounter, a pair of goblins (whew for rolling low) saw a nail-biter, with Brenor barely scrapping through with one HP.

All in all, easy, fun and a great new little system.

....on Thieves

I have never been in the party of 'there is something wrong with the thieves class' but upon reading James West's recent blog post I began to think about it.

After an initial distaste for his idea of rolling a d100 for each Thief Ability initial score, I actually came around and really liked this idea. This would create wildly different and dynamic thieves from the outset, making each one unique. I would include Hear Noise, deviating from the d6 roll (which is weird anyway since the rest are d% rolls). 

Now how to handle progression? Lookin at BECMI and BX, the thief goes up by an average of 26 points per level gain. (Side note, weird how we have that damn to hit plateau in the rules but here thieves get better every level....what gives Gary?) Anyway...

So what if we take their Dexterity score, add to their Intelligence score, and that is how many points the character gains per level to increase their Thief Ability scores. If we use an average of 11 for each score, we are just slightly below the points gained in the original system. As we likely are starting off better initial scores, we are most likely ahead of the terrible initial scores in the original game.

What are your thoughts?

Nine month itch? Or...

 

Maybe just glad to be alive? I don't know.

I was out in the garage, cleaning it up and getting ready to hopefully start working out again (still waiting on a few of the 13 ribs I broke to finish the healing process), and out of the corner of my eye I see a familiar color of red on a box.

"What is that?!?!" old memories having an inkling of remembrance. Did I mention I have PTSD for memory loss? Yeah, clinically diagnosed and compensated for after a rollover in Iraq. Thank you, Veteran's Administration.

I quickly climb up ONE STEP on a STEPSTOOL and not a ladder (holy fuck no, not another ladder, they have been outlawed at my house for all time). Sure enough, my old mind did recognize that color, it is what I thought it was! I do not recall purchasing this, but I am sure I did. a First printing, 1983 version of the game that started it all (for me). I got this set for my birthday from my friend Chet and we played it constantly. 

Now, finding this, I suddenly find myself with a massive urge to run some games using the game that brought me into the hobby....

Hexmap

Made this last night while I could not sleep (drugs make life a bit of a rollercoaster). It is based off a map I found on a Google search years ago and I had saved on my tablet. Not super happy with it but hey, for an hour or so in the early morning hours when you are unable to sleep? I'll take it.

Black & white version:

Dispatches from the hospital

As some of you may have heard, I took a nasty fall off a ladder at about 20 ft. By some sort of miracle or by grace of God, I am making a speedy recovery and I appear to have no lasting mental or physical disabilities. Someone was truly looking out for me that day. I had my kids bring my tablet so that I could ensure that I would still be able to draw maps. Above this text is the result. I seem to be okay I will just take some time to make a full recovery.

Thank you for all the well wishes, for those who put me on their prayer list, and for those who reached out personally. I truly appreciate the outpouring of support and well wishes.