Baran One-Hand, Captain of the Watch

 By lundqvist from DeviantArt

I've had this idea for a while of running an open table at my local gaming store. The idea is that the players start at the Keep on the Borderlands, find a rumour they want to follow up on, explore the land, raid a dungeon and end the session back at the Keep. With that in mind I've been looking up some ideas. Mainly I've been reading the Frog God/Necromancer Games stuff since it fits the feel I'm looking for. Less story, more adventure. Part of the plan is to transform Fairhill from the Crucible of Freya into the Keep. I decided that every NPC needs a secret, something that will lead into an adventure and this is what I came up with for the Captain of the Watch.

Baran One-Hand, Captain of the Watch

The Watch Captain of Fairhill Keep is gruff man, particularly with those claiming to be “adventurers”. He arrived at the Keep a little over ten years ago as a caravan guard. Then the mercenary hired on as part of the watch. Not long after the Keep was attacked by a contingent of orc marauders. During the battle he proved himself to be a great warrior and was promoted to Watch Captain by Duke Arlen himself replacing the previous Captain who had fallen during the battle. Since that time Baran has shown great skill as the leader of the Watch and has garnered the trust and respect of those that live in the Keep including the its temporal leader Duke Arlen and its Spiritual leader Shandril. Despite his honorable and brave exterior Baran hides a dark secret. Baran claims that he lost his hand fighting swamp trolls long ago. While this is partially true, the reality is that those trolls were in the service of Koraashag, then a lowly but ambitious priest of Orcus. Using a vile and obscure necromantic ritual Koraashag hacked off Baran’s right hand with a ceremonial dagger. The ritual cursed Baran and bonded him into the service of the priest. Baran is forever compelled to do Koraashag’s bidding as if he had a geas spell cast on him. The priest tasked him to infiltrate the Keep as his personal spy. The cult knows that Keep holds a strategic location along the trade way and as a defense against further expansion into the area. Baran has allowed the Koraashag’s agent, Tavik and his orc minions to move into Eralion’s abandoned Keep. He is sick with grief at his part in letting evil take hold in the area and his betrayal of Duke Arlen and the priestess Shandril’s trust. He has tried on many occasions to rid himself of the curse but the magic prevents himself from speaking of it or from even killing himself. Baran is able to communicate with Koraashag who is now a high priest in the cult of Orcus and is based out of the Stoneheart Dungeon via his stump. Whenever Koraashag or Baran wishes to communicate the stump transforms into a grotesque and monstrous mouth. This stump-monster speaks with a demonic voice and can make a bite attack with vicious shark-like teeth that ring the mouth. Likewise, Koraashag is able to listen and speak through Baran’s necromantically preserved right hand. Baran is not a bad man. He regrets that he didn’t die in that battle with the trolls all those years ago. The only way to lift the curse is to find Koraashag and destroy the hand on the alter of the new Temple of Orcus (Level 4, room 15) of the Stoneheart Dungeon (See Tomb of Abysthor).

Campaign Idea: The Knights Of Cydonia

Dream Pod 9's Heavy Gear RPG panted the idea in my head that every campaign should have an opening theme song that you play at the beginning of each session to set the one. It's something that has never really left my mind. After watching this video of Muse's Knights of Cydonia I'm inspired to run a retro western campaign in wasteland land known as Cydonia. Full of  adventure involving laser gun totting villians, kung-fu masters and strange evil cultists. Don't forget the unicorn riding valkaries and the wandering robots!

Escalation of Power

Wow, Look at all the cobwebs up in this joint! It’s been more than a while since I last posted. I make no apologies for that. Gaming is low on my list of priorities lately. I miss it and I have had ideas in the pipe for things I would love to do but unfortunate time is at a premium these days.

I have been playing my fair share of Magic: The Gathering though. I won a tournament this past summer and the new Battle for Zendikar set is pretty rad. Which leads me into an idea about how magic is handled in RPG’s.

What we tend to see in Rpgs are Vancian/spell slots, spell points or a skill check system. I seem to recall Shadowrun having a system that let you set how powerful you wanted the spell to be and then see if you were able to control that much power without hurting yourself. I always thought that was pretty slick, but overly complicated in execution.

The idea I had this morning was this; in a game of magic you are limited by how many spells you can cast based on how much mana you have at anyone time. Typical Magic decks try to maximize each turn by casting your highest cost card as soon as the mana is available each turn. For example, on turn one you play a land and cast a one mana cost spell. Turn two, you play a land and cast a two mana cost spell. And so on until the game is over. This is an ideal situation but the point is that you are restricted each turn by being able to play only one land. On turn one you are relatively weak but as the game progresses you can cast massive spells as your resources to power grow.

This got me thinking about the Escalation Die from the 13^th Age RPG. What if every round a magic

users power grew in accordance with how long he is channeling mana? Every round of combat would allow the caster an additional spell point. So on turn one he could cast a spell worth one spell point, and on turn two a spell that cost two points, and so on.

This could be applied to combat in general. Special combat moves could be given a point cost and more powerful combat tricks open up as the battle progresses. Thus the combat can escalate quickly. In fact, this might be a great way to fix the combat token system that was introduced with Mike Mearls’s Iron Heroes RRG.

Anyway, just a thought I had. Until the next time we meet, happy gaming people!

Tempest Sector: Cygnus

Art by Wen JR

Atmosphere: Breathable Mix

Temperature: Warm

Biosphere: Engineered

Population: Outpost

Tech Level: 4 (baseline)

Tags: Quarantined, Tomb World

The Star Kingdom of Chimera once had a science outpost located on this quarantined planet. Sometime in Cygnus's distant past an alien race lived on this planet. This race has not completely disappeared however. Massive pyramids and monuments of metal and stone remain. Hieroglyphs and alien remains have revealed that this race may have some kind of relationship to the ancient Egyptian culture of Old Earth.

Exploration of the the various tombs have revealed labyrinth like catacombs filled with traps, treasure, and the mummified remains of these highly technologically advanced aliens. The explorers also accidentally released a virus that infected the modern technology brought along by the Star Kingdom's military and researchers. Drone's and other equipment became self-aware and violent towards the explorers. Thus the need to seal off the planet from any other group that might want to explore it and reap it's hidden secrets.

Since that time the dead have somehow been brought back to life. Often these undead have been transformed into cybernetic terrors. So far efforts have been made to keep these horrors from being able to leave the planet and hide the truth from the galaxy at large. There are those however who would like nothing more than to get onto the planet and reap whatever reward they might be able to. In fact the Monolith Corporation would like nothing more than to have one of it's infected “Gorilla” Drones captured, alive if possible and returned to one of it's secret laboratories for study. The tombs themselves are filled with artifacts and art that the rich would pay handsomely for if one could survive the creatures and traps that wait within. Finally there are those that would love to topple the current government with the news of what secrets are being hidden from the people of the Kingdom.

Tempest Sector Map

A while back I had some free time on my hands. What I didn't have was the nice template from SWN to fill in. So I made my own. It's a masterpiece if I do say so myself. Only the real high quality shit for my readers. I rolled up stuff for each star there too. Now I just need to record it all here on the blog.

Hand crafted sector map for Stars Without Number

Rogues in the Death Star

This may have been the map our DM used.

There have been a few campaigns that I've run or played in during my time playing RPGs that have been pretty awesome. But the one that will always stand out in my mind will be the one we just called the Thieves Campaign.

It started the summer that the 3e Players Handbook came out. It wasn't meant to be anything more than a filler game until we could get the whole group back together again. There was just the two of us plus the DM.

The DM had just come back from a vacation in Germany. He had visited a little place called Rothenburg. He was excited because he had this map of the town and he wanted to use it for D&D. Add to the fact that we wanted to try out this new edition of the game and the DM's copy of TSR's Den of Thieves and we had a winning formula. The adventures of Ringo & Rictor began.

That night we had our first argument about Attacks of Opportunity. But we also had a lot of fun. We planned a heist and stole a bunch of gems. We made enemies with the Guild of Assassins and a notorious thief who shunned Rothenburg's Thieves Guild named the “Owl”. We made friends like Marcy a fellow thief who always tried to out do us, and Baruck who sponsored us to the Guild in the first place.

I'm not sure to this day how much the DM used from this
book, but it did provide the foundation for one of the
most memorable campaigns I've ever played in.

As things progressed and people came back from vacations the campaign continued. The rule was that you had to have a least one level of Rogue or Bard. It was a low magic game and I remember have a magic dagger that I cherished. If there was something that earlier editions got right it was that magic items should be unique and rare. We managed to create our own secret hideout from the underground lair of a band of serpent-men we defeated. Above it we created a bakery as a front and staffed it with an ex-gang member we befriended.

Those early days of my roleplaying career were probably some of my best. The newness of it all. The sense of mystery and fear. The rules had little to do with it. In fact the more we learned the rules, and the more serious I took the game, the less fun I ended up having. Ringo & Rictor were a lot like the Grey Mouser and Fafhrd. They were thieve's but they had a code of honour and they protected the city of Rothenburg from those that would do it harm. Of course a man has to eat so if a few things had to get nicked along the way so be it.

So aside from some nostalgic babbling here are the morales of this story. The best campaigns can and usually do arise from adventures that grow organically. Magic items are much cooler when they are rare and unique. Don't let the rules get in the way of the fun. Don't let yourself ruin the fun by taking thing too seriously. I guess the thing here is that line from Princess Leia in “A New Hope” to Grand Moff Tarkin. “The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers”. To which Tarkin replies, “Not after we demonstrate the capabilities of this station”. An yet the Death Star was destroyed by Luke. An inexperienced pilot who turned off his targeting computer and trusted in the Force to guide his shot. The greatest of our gaming constructs are vulnerable to the smallest of things. So don't sweat it. Let go and just enjoy the ride. 

Thoughts on Elemental Evil

Iä! Shub-Niggurath!
Iä! Shub-Niggurath! 
The Black Fire of Chaos with a Thousand Flames!

"There are wheels within wheels in this village and fires within fires."

                                           - The Crucible

I've updated the Ultimate Greyhawk page. I realize that I barely wrote up a third of the locations in Hommlet, and yet I'm sure theres more than enough material to start playing this thing. So many hooks and mini adventures. And thats not even counting the whole Cult of Elemental Evil at the centre of things.

Speaking of Elemental Evil. Wizards has started to roll out their new 5e vision for it in the Realms. At first I recoiled from the idea. But now the more I think on it the more I approve. See the thing is I've always felt that the generic nature of the factions was weak. It was something I planned to fix in my personal take on the blog. The idea of strange mystery cults that draw in people of all walks of life, hidden in the wilderness plotting and planning really gets me excited. It's fresh and it's new. Change for change's sake is silly, but I think this is a move in the right direction. 

The other reason I've always felt that the cults needed more was because of Monte Cook. Some people believe that his vision for Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil was a bad one. I disagree with those people, but hey, they're entitled to their own opinions. Anyway, while Monte was working on RttToEE he was also running his Ptolus campaign. You can see the parallels between his Chaos Cults in Ptolus and the Elemental Cults. For me it really illustrated how while these groups all have a common goal they are all so different from each other. How much they hate each other, and just how much character they each have despite this common uniting factor. 

I think thats the secret to properly running any kind of ToEE campaign. In fact I'd go farther and argue that almost any campaign relies on the strength of it's NPC's and the organizations they represent. For me ToEE is all about secrets. It's about the PC's and who can they trust. There should be paranoia, fear and backstabbing. Running ToEE is like running a great Call of Cthulhu campaign. Each layer reveals a new one, and the process of reaching each layer bring the characters that much closer to losing their fucking minds. The cults of Elemental Evil are not about the Elements. Those are just the tools of madness. Worshipers of of Elemental Evil are all about CHAOS.

At some point I'll come back to all of this. The ToEE is one of those things that I always seem to come back to. I hope you've enjoyed what I've written so far. It's nothing spectacular, but it has been fun to do.