Looking back at 2023 and a year of blogging

 Since it seems to be the thing to do on this last day of 2023, I am jumping on the bandwagon and writing a post about the year in review, specifically focusing on this blog.

So, what did I do this year?  Well, I blogged! A lot! 60 posts (not counting this one) in 2023, and several more lined up and waiting for me to get around to writing them.

Between the Serpents of Smoke and Steel - an OD&D Campaign

While I technically prepped and started this campaign in 2022, most of it was run in the first few months of 2023, so it counts.

I had gotten very interested in what OD&D presented mechanically for your standard dungeon crawling adventure, and wanted to explore some of the implications of that. I went with a magical Mesopotamia sort of setting (which in retrospect I did not do enough with, due to not feeling that emotionally invested in it), slapped a few house rules on top of Delving Deeper and off we go! The campaign ran only for 14 sessions total, a rather short thing, but an eventful one. I really liked how having only 2 classes properly focused players on what they wanted to do, I enjoyed running huge masses of people fighting between each other without needing to do much in the way system changing, and the thing peaked with a tabletop wargame that I designed, drew and then assembled myself. That one is a definitely a highlight for me for this year! 

But the campaign had to come to an end, as I was getting done with the setting, the campaign had reached a nice pause point and soon after I was going to be spending 5 months outside the country (and that can be a bit of a problem for an in-person game, let me tell ya!)

The Greylands House Campaign - Returning to the familiar

While I was in the US with my partners, I wanted to run a weekly game for them. Earlier in the year I figured I'd just keep going with BSSS, but instead I decided to go back to the setting and system (a slightly tweaked B/X) from my first OSR campaign - The Greylands. The Greylands, if you haven't checked the blog or heard me talk about it on Discord, is my knock-off Hill Cantons setting that I am hoping to eventually make a bit more of its own thing. 

In this case I literally packed all the dungeons and other materials from the previous campaign, reset the main tentpole dungeon of the region (Dyson's Delve, reinterpreted as a dungeon under the old manor of the Boyar that used to rule the area) and just run my two players through it again.

The game ended up focusing almost entirely on the main dungeon itself, and it actually lead to some interesting comparisons between how these players and the previous ones had handled the dungeon and how the dungeon had responded to them in turn. These are observations I hope to post about at some point soon in a retrospective on the house campaign.

Outside of that, the game was enjoyable for all involved, produced some fun and interesting characters like Rusty, the  runty hobgoblin talasum (who truly lived up to the expectations of his bullies by just generally being deeply ineffectual throughout the entire game), Baba Tonka the tamed grizzly bear and others.

It also helped cement my decision to stick with this setting and explore other parts of it in the future, which I hope to do in the coming year. Check in here for more of that, I guess.

Legacy of the Bieth - I get to actually play for once! 

So yeah, as the subheading says, I also actually got to be a player, not just referee this year! I had the honor and pleasure to participate in Humza's Legacy of the Bieth campaign. I had played in it in 2022 as well, during another prolonged visit to the US. However my character, despite all the misadventures and brushes with the Death and Dismemberment table, was at the end of it only level 1. This year though I got to be a lot more involved and participate in a lot more lucrative ventures, getting poor old Rustam to level 4, with friends in the world of the djinn and allies and connections in the mortal world as well.

I always enjoy opportunities to actually be a player in a game, so this was very special for me. Besides this campaign, a couple of sessions in a bizarro version of the Hill Cantons and a few con games were all the play I got to do. Here is hoping I actually get the chance to play in more OSR games next year!

Blogging a bunch

So yeah, like I said above - 60 posts! I have been enjoying posting session reports and I find I get a lot out of them as a referee being able to look back on events in the campaign(s) and more importantly on my observations on what worked, what didn't and what stood out in a given session.

I also posted a bunch of classes and little rule-things relating to my Greylands setting and system that I hope to implement in the next installment of the campaign. 

Plus there was also the stuff not directly relating to a game I am currently running or plan on running. Stuff like my post on running play-by-post games, or a few reviews of books, or my current series of posts on hobby best practices, which seems to resonated with people and that makes me happy and glad that I decided to write it. 

I am not much on coming up with and writing theory, so it was nice to get at least some of that done. 

Hobby goals for 2024

Finally, looking forward to 2024 what am I hoping to do? Well there's a few blog posts that I want to write - two more posts in the hobby best practices series, a retrospective on my house campaign as I said above and a post about the importance aesthetics play in miniature wargaming.

I also hope to start up a megadungeon campaign in a different, more Slavic part of the Greylands world and get to post regular session reports from that as well! If all goes well and life doesn't completely kick me in the balls I am even hoping to actually get two different groups going in the same dungeon, just to see what kind of interesting experiences that produces because I haven't done that before!

In non-RPG hobbying I hope to make a significant dent in a long-term modeling project that I will hopefully post about here at some point once I feel I have enough worth showing, and I am really hopeful I can get back into miniatures wargaming. I had kind of stopped playing those entirely for a few years, and I am hoping to get more involved in these again. And since I'm doing wargaming I also plan on doing more board wargaming in the upcoming year, which is what had helped scratch that itch until now. 

So that's it. Goodbye 2023!

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 4

Series Index
<< Part 3 * Part 5 >>

Part 4 - Be a creative hobbyist

Last month there was a post on Grognardia about "being a creator, not a consumer." While very good advice in general, let’s talk a bit more about what this actually entails.

After all, simply saying that creating things is good is kind of vague, isn’t it? Because intent and end goals matter. Creating things is fine. But to what end do you create those things? There is, I feel, a substantive difference between creating something to simply share with other hobbyists, and creating stuff with the goal of making it into a product.

Plenty of people have already pointed out that the OSR is turning more and more into not a hobbyist space, but a place for people to sell each other their own house rules and, if you’re lucky, some adventures. This is in many ways antithetical to a hobby community, as the relations it creates are those between product maker and consumer, rather than between peers both engaging in the same shared interests. While I agree with, say, Marcia that reducing that is a good thing, I also think it is a logical step in the capitalist reality in which we all have to exist.

As such the natural inclination to turn one’s hobby into a side hustle, or a product of some kind. I will not tell you to not do it, mostly because it’s not my place to do so. I will point out my own personal story with this, being someone who used to draw a lot of art relating to the setting of Glorantha, to the point where it then became my job to do so for a solid 9 years. While I am quite happy with the stuff I learned while being a professional artist, that’s the rub - I was a professional artist now, not a hobbyist. And while then, as now, I do plenty of art for my own enjoyment, that change has been permanent.

People like Gus L for example have mentioned before that the reason they charge money for some things is that it helps that specific module get seen and treated as worthwhile, because in the capitalist reality that we exist in, things being given away for free are often seen as worth less than something that you have to pay for. So I suppose if you want to go down that route, that is a question one must answer for themselves - do I want to put a money tag on the hobby creativity that I am practicing or not?

I personally prefer not to. If I am writing a class, or house rules or something else, I prefer to simply have it online and available for other hobbyists to see and freely take from, just as I freely take from what other hobbyists have done as well. That free flow of ideas, tools and concepts is what initially drew me to the OSR as a niche, as it seemed to contrast the consumer-focused broader RPG hobby, where the main thing discussed is what books you bought and what books you have in your collection, rather than what you are running or what you’ve created yourself.

Ultimately, with the consideration of monetization of one’s hobby aside, I do still think that, yes, being someone who creates rather than simply consumes is definitely a best hobby practice. It allows you to break out of the mindset of being a passive participant in what is an active hobby, and allows you to talk to others as peers rather than as a customer.

In the next post, I will talk about what might be a rather obvious point - practicing one’s hobby (as opposed to simply discussing it or participating in peripheral activities and side-hobbies).

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 3

 

Series Index
<< Part 2 * Part 4 >>

Part 3 - Participate in a hobby community

Most hobbies, but especially tabletop RPGs, tend to be social activities to some degree. Many people become interested in a hobby as a way to find others with similar tastes or views and participate in a community of like minded people.

This is good, and you should do it too. Obviously community participation carries its own sets of issues and problems, but I believe it is still best practice to find at least one community focused around your hobby and be a part of it.

I will not go into details on how to be a good participant in a community, as that is deeply context sensitive to each community and each hobby, but I will direct people to this excellent post on Papers and Pencils about it.

Being part of a hobby community allows you to be exposed to other hobbyists that you can talk with and share your experience with. After all, if you have been writing about your hobby and about the experience of practicing it, it would be useful to have people who would read those writings. And to read the writings of others and compare them to your own experience and learn from them.

Obviously, a hobby like TTRPGs is a social activity, so having other hobbyists to all do your hobby with is a big boon. While running demonstrations and playing with newcomers or complete outsiders to the hobby is valuable, it can also end up ultimately rather limiting your own experience as a hobbyist. If this is all you want to do, then great - more power to you! But I consider it important to also practice your hobby among peers or, even better, those who are more experienced hobbyists than yourself in order to grow.

To go to miniature painting for an example - it will be more useful for your own learning to be around better painters than yourself, rather than to demonstrate the basics of base coating to new people and nothing else.

A hobby community does not need to be big, either. Tony Bath, a luminary of the wargaming hobby, ostensibly started his hobbyist practice with just one other friend to play games with, eventually it ballooning into the Hyboria Campaign, a wargaming campaign of such scale and importance that even now, some 60 years later, people are still mentioning it or referencing it!

Don’t have anyone though? Well, I think you know what you have to do here, right? If there is no community for you to participate in (and that is almost never true, but maybe you want an in-person rather than an online one!), then it is your job to create it. Yes, community creation, maintenance and growing are difficult, hard and complex things that most people are not suited for or good at. As someone who has done that work before, I fully acknowledge that. But it is also a good thing to at least try and do, even if you just learn that you are not strong at it.

Perhaps your efforts will attract the attention of someone who is better at these things, and you would have helped start a community anyway! It does happen, believe it or not.

In the next part I will talk about being a creative hobbyist, not just a consumer.

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 2

 

Series Index
<< Part 1 * Part 3 >>

Part 2 - Introduce others to your hobby

In four large cities with communities of early D&D adopters Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston cross-pollination proceeded quite rapidly. Each of these major cities boasted lengthy pedigrees in both science-fiction fandom and wargames, and each supported several independent clusters of dedicated players. None, however, was very close to the midwestern roots of D&D, where the influence of the game's creators might hold greater sway. In keeping with hobby best practices, these coastal groups began publicly recording the state of their campaigns and hosting visitors unfamiliar with their ways. - The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson. Emphasis mine.  

This is the second post in the hobby best practices series. In this one I will continue with the second example given in the quote above - introducing new people to your hobby! I’ll talk about participating in hobby communities later, but in general most people tend to enjoy the company of other hobbyists that share their interests. And the way those people get there is that someone introduces them into the hobby. So why not have that someone be you?

In hobbies like TTRPGs, this more or less means one thing - run games. Be it at conventions, at your LGS or for your friends, it doesn’t matter. Organizing and running games for newbies is the best way to demonstrate the hobby and bring more people into it.

If you want to do this right, this does mean that this is a role with a good deal of responsibility to it. Being the person responsible for introducing people to a brand new thing means you are, by default, an ambassador to the entire hobby. A bad or a good experience can mean either getting a new convert or driving someone off the hobby entirely.

Also lets be clear here - you will drive people out of the hobby. Even if you are the best GM out there, you will sooner or later run a game for someone who just…isn’t into it or doesn’t actually like the hobby you are demonstrating, and your demonstration will be what helps them realize they don’t like the thing. This is not bad. Remember how I mentioned that forming taste happens through contemplating experiences and learning what you do or don’t like and why you do or don’t like it? Well you have now helped someone refine their own taste just a bit more!

In miniatures wargaming this activity often takes the form of running demo games for people. Either by individuals or by gaming clubs, organizing demo games where others can become acquainted with the hobby.

Speaking of clubs, if you are part of one, having an open doors day of some kind is a good idea and a great way to get new faces to look at your hobby. Run exhibitions, or hell - maybe even a small convention. Or have a presence at an existing local convention, showing off what it is your club is focused on!

Importantly, this activity is not just for bringing complete newbies into your hobby. For example, if you are someone like me who is interested in a specific sub-niche of a hobby (OSR or DIY Gaming or whatever you want to call it) you can still do demonstration games for people who are part of the broader hobby that yours is a niche in! Do you practice your hobby in a different way than what most others would be familiar with? Excellent, run a demonstration for them. These demonstrations among hobbyists have different requirements and different expectations to them, as others would be familiar to at least some degree with what you are talking about, but are hopefully curious to learn a new perspective.

Hell, let’s go one step further - even with fellow hobbyists who are part of your sub-niche, but don’t participate in the specific group that you practice your hobby among? Try running a demonstration for them. Maybe your playgroup have developed an interesting technique or practice that is not widely adopted by the rest of your hobby - why not share it for others to experience and learn from?

In the next part I will talk about participating in hobby communities since it naturally follows from this one.

On Hobby Best Practices - Part 1

Series Index
Part 2 >>

Part 1 - Record your hobby experience

In four large cities with communities of early D&D adopters Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston cross-pollination proceeded quite rapidly. Each of these major cities boasted lengthy pedigrees in both science-fiction fandom and wargames, and each supported several independent clusters of dedicated players. None, however, was very close to the midwestern roots of D&D, where the influence of the game's creators might hold greater sway. In keeping with hobby best practices, these coastal groups began publicly recording the state of their campaigns and hosting visitors unfamiliar with their ways. - The Elusive Shift, Jon Peterson. Emphasis mine.  

    This is the first in a series of posts regarding what I consider to be best practices when it comes to one's hobby. In this case - tabletop RPGs, but I hope this advice is broadly applicable to other hobbies as well.

Lets begin with one of the examples from the quote that inspired this - recording your hobby. The simplest way to do this is, of course, to just start a blog on a free blog platform like blogspot or bearblog or whatever, and write about your game and your experience in it. This is a big part of why I started this very blog myself.

But, what should you write? Well that depends on the hobby in question. In the case of TTRPGs I would say there’s a few things that are worth covering.

First 

    Session reports! You’ll notice there’s a lot of these on here. I write session reports for two reasons. One is to simply have a place where I can store notes about the events in previous sessions of the game I am running, and two - so I can write my observations about the gaming experience and what it’s made me think about since it happened.

That latter one is, I feel, the more valuable of the two. It is what lets others understand how you practice your hobby. If you’re a referee, talk about your decision making and the process through which you organise or run your game. How do you stock dungeons? If you only run existing modules, how do you pick which ones to use? How do you keep track of your NPCs? What about keeping track of time in the game?

Are you a player? How did you handle a certain situation that the GM presented in your latest session? What long term plans do you have for your character(s) in the campaign, should they survive to see them come to fruition? Are you playing using a more complex system involving a lot of moving parts - how do you navigate it? Do you have any “builds” that you think have worked in the game? Any curious or clever ways in which you or your fellow players solved a situation in the game?

All of these above are things one can and should write about, I think. Writing about what you feel about the gaming experience, what you like and don’t like, what works and what doesn’t is important. For me personally, it allows me to actually think about the events of the game. Not the campaign, the game. About why I decided to resolve a situation one way, instead of another. Thinking about your hobby this way is what leads you to deciding what it is you like or don’t like. It builds actual taste. And simply knowing what you like, and why you like it will put you ahead of so ,so many people out there.

Second

    Write theory. If you already have plenty of practice with your hobby, and have gathered a good amount of useful information, knowledge and tricks of the trade? Share them with everyone else so that other hobbyists may learn from them.

This is the biggest thing that helped the OSR take shape as it did - people blogged about games, and about how to run games or play games. And it was born out of actual practice, like all good theory is. There are so many elements of this niche of the hobby that started their life on blogs, by having people write so that they can share their experience with others. And doing it for free, too. But we’ll get to that point later.

Third

    Write criticism. TTRPGs especially are woefully lacking in decent criticism. Be it reviews of products or what have you, things are….rather dire. Everything is either reading ad copy at you, or if you’re lucky someone reading through an adventure module and telling you how it feels. There’s nothing wrong with that, but playing TTRPGs is a hobby of doing things, not simply consuming media. Real, honest and valuable criticism comes from actual play (see below) and I would love to see more people writing about things they’ve run or played in, and giving an honest opinion on what worked and what didn’t.

There are issues with this, of course - in small circles like TTRPGs (let alone something even more niche like the OSR or Storygames) people tend to more or less know each other, and so it can feel a bit awkward to write a review about how another fellow hobbyist’s project is just kind of bad.

And that’s true…but conversely, this is part of being an adult. Taking criticism when it is given honestly and earnestly and without malice, and learning from it. And, hopefully, emerging a better hobbyist in the process.

Fourth and Last

    Just write about whatever is on your mind! This is probably the least important, but still valuable to keep you in the habit of recording and writing about your hobby.

You of course don’t have to just do a blog at all. Maybe you have a YouTube channel, in which case you can record videos about all of the above mentioned topics! Or maybe you write a newsletter that you send out to people. Or you want to go proper old school and take the atavistic route, writing, printing, hand-stapling and distributing small print run physical zines with your writings in them.

The actual medium matters only a little. The practice is the important part.

In the next post I will talk about introducing others to your hobby.

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 14

      

Summary 

The party finishes clearing out the prison area on level 6, mostly by being constantly interrupted by wandering monster checks while they're trying to do stuff.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 5 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 5 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 4 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 4 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear); Bluey (War Dog)

Session Recap

After 5 weeks of downtime, spent preparing the party return once more to the prison sub-level on level 6, determined to explore the two final doors they hadn't been through (well they saw what was behind one of them, but didn't want to bother with it at the time).

Beyond the door in the northern part of the dungeon, they found....another door! And a pair of suspicious looking iron statues in the forms of prison guards (hooded faces and menacing looking spiked clubs in hand). With their recent encounters with animated statues, the party decided to test these guys out. They did not seem to respond to being roped, toppled over or even dragged out of their little alcoves. 

Satisfied the party went ahead with the extremely noisy task of using hammers and spikes and crowbars to break apart the statues just in case they do animate once the door they were guarding is open. However the noise kept attracting the weirder denizens of the sublevel, the party having to constantly stop, pelt with arrows/flasks of Sunfire an array of orange jellies, gelatinous cubes, thouls and carrion crawlers.

However, finally, with the statues dismembered (taking off an arm and a leg off of each) Pipam the Younger went to the last unknown door to attempt and open it. The door was locked, as expected, and so the thief settled into try and get the lock picked which...took her close to an hour of failing and retrying. Eventually the lock clicked, her picklocks turned and with that she and Zoltan the dwarf could hear the faint sound of snakes hissing beyond the door.

Calling out to whoever was in there, they only heard muffled and incoherent shouts back. Exercising caution, they used a mirror and one of their Continual Light enchanted coins that power their lanterns now, to check what was in beyond the door. 

Cracking the door slightly, chucking in the coin and looking into the mirror they do, in fact, see a Meduza - a mass of snakes adorned with a woman's face. This one appeared gaunt and starved, and clearly not used to seeing light as the coin made her lose her shit once more. The party quickly slammed and locked the door again.

The last prisoner left in the prison.

Nobody was eager to get petrified by looking at her or try and fight her only to have one of her many, many snakes poison them. So the group devised a plan to make the creature petrify itself with its visage.

Before that though they went and cleared out the four crystalline statues in the room they were trying to get into last session, finding that unfortunately there was nothing else of interest in there except the guardian statues themselves, and a trapped false bottom of a wardrobe that was guarding nothing but dust.

Recruiting a gaggle of the sturdier Talasum and going to level 5, where they took down the large mirrors they found in one of the rooms there, and began the slow and meticulous process of getting those dragged to the prison. Several talasum did end up killed by the various nasties in the dungeon while doing so, but eventually the party had set up a series of mirrors right outside the door of the prisoner. 

Von Plarf was positioned at the end of the series of hallways, armed with a hand mirror and a wand of paralysis as a plan B, while Pipam the Younger took off her armor and equipment, approached the door and, after picking the lock open again, swung it open and ran back as fast as possible.

Soon the Meduza had apparently realized her cell had been opened, and ran out, the party hearing the thunk! and shatter of a mirror being knocked over and falling on the ground, before the approaching hissing and shouting got cut abruptly silent.

Carefully approaching behind the bend, the group found the poor being petrified by her own visage in one of the mirrors, although despite being now entirely made of stone they could still hear the ghostly echoes of snakes hissing and muffled shouting. Clearly the being was cursed in some way, and the group decided to decapitate the statue and break it apart, finally putting her out of her misery for good.

In her cell the group discovered an absurdly large horde of jewelry, the personal possessions of the meduza and with those, along with the parts of the now silent statue, the group returned back up to their manor.

The manor construction efforts were making good progress, with the fortified first floor now completely done, and the wooden timber frames for the second floor being up too. However with the approach of the holiday season, and the celebrations of the Sun Lord's Ascension that marks the beginning of the new year, the party might need to wait for a bit longer before their laborers are willing to finish the building.

GM Observations

So, this was a rather short session mostly focused on fights, of all things. With the prison section of level 6 being occupied by unintelligent and actively hostile creatures like slimes and undead, it really does not offer much in the way of interaction with enemies besides just killing them. A definite issue in the last two sessions, I noticed.

I personally enjoyed the plans the players had for dealing with the iron statues and the meduza. The statues are explicitly written that they only move to stop people if they try and open the door, but not in self defense. So the party simply took them to the side, broke them apart and while, yes, they did animate as Pipam opened the door, all they could do was mostly just....flail around uselessly as the party finished them off.

Lining the hallway leading out of the cell with giant mirrors was also a good plan and even more so, one utilizing a seemingly irrelevant room feature in an upper dungeon floor. However there is no such thing as an irrelevant feature, as anything that exists in the dungeon is subject to being used in creative ways, such as this!

This game is winding down no, with me travelling soon, but it has been an enjoyable and relatively low stress thing focusing on just the one single dungeon.  Plus repairing and reestablishing the fortified manor on top is an excellent long term goal which leaves a notable mark on the land. And while I will likely not be returning my campaign to this specific part of the setting for a while (unless I continue this one of course), it brings me at least satisfaction to know that the manor is there. 

U-Con 2023 - Sunday & Final Thoughts

Last day of the convention and I only had one game.  So I'll go over that, and then some final thoughts about the con overall.

The Cave of Our People 

This game was run by the same GM who ran the Great Egg Race yesterday. The adventure is for Primal Quest, but the GM was using a modified Cairn for the rules. 

The general premise is that the characters are a group of young people from a Neolithic tribe about to undergo the initiation rituals to become adults. 

The premise is fun and enjoyable, however I will say I found the adventure itself quite linear and not all that interesting. There was not a lot to do that wasn't just go from encounter to encounter. The GM himself seemed to struggle with it at times, having to pause to read through the booklet which did kill the pacing of the game on several occasions, but I think a lot of it can be laid at the module itself. 

It wasn't a bad experience or anything, but definitely the low point of the four games I played in during the convention.

Final Thoughts

So, if I had to describe my overall feeling of U-Con 2023 it would be "Good, but not Great".  The convention felt (and was) smaller and a bit less varied in offerings especially in the OSR side of games. It felt like a clearly diminished version of the convention I saw when I was there in 2019 for their 30 year anniversary.

Still, despite all of that, U-Con is an enjoyable convention. having the hotel and convention center be in the same building just makes things feel cozy and intimate. Would I wish there were more and more varied OSR games being run? Yes. Perhaps I should have run one myself, but I kept going back and forth on that and decided against it.

I would overall recommend it to anyone who's in the area and if I had the option to, I would likely attend it in the future too (But I won't, due to life).

U-Con 2023 - Saturday

So, Saturday. Today I went to check out the Vendor Hall. While U-Con didn't have a particularly big one when I was there in 2019, unfortunately this year the place was rather dire. Very few vendors, and most of them selling what could at best be described as "tat" - stuff that is vaguely peripheral to gaming, but that's about it.

Between the pandemic and the proximity to Thanksgiving, this year the convention is rather small and it feels like it. Still, the place where the vendor hall is located is hardly a large room to begin with, as the convention is just more focused on playing games than buying them.

And speaking of which, today I was only in one game. 

The Great Egg Race - Three Racoons in a Trench Coat

Finally made it to the eggs!

The game was run by Brett Slocum. The concept is simple - we divide into two teams of three, and each team is, in fact, three racoons hidden in a trenchcoat. As a friendly challenge we go into a human supermarket to get some eggs and abscond with them. The trio with the most eggs gets bragging rights.

It was a fun party game, honestly something very much in the style of Honey Heist. Our team went for a much more chaotic approach, taking jars off shelves and throwing them at the other team, at their cart and in the end - at the supermarket security! Not much to really say about it, except that it's a decent idea for a short con-game and worth running if you want something like Honey Heist, but with racoons instead of bears.

All in all a fairly chill convention day. Unfortunately with the vendor hall being what it is, there is not much else to do, except I suppose play board games. 

Last day of the con tomorrow.

U-Con 2023 - Friday

 Inspired by Warren's posting about ReaperCon earlier this year, I decided I'll try and post about my experience attending U-Con this year. I was at this convention once before in 2019 and really enjoyed it, so here we are for a second go!

U-Con in General

A small-ish local convention in Michigan, U-Con definitely has an atmosphere I can best describe as "cozy". It reminds me of some of the German cons I've been to, where it's a small group of people hanging out in the same hotel and gaming. 

The reason I like U-Con in particular is that it has a dedicated OSR/NSR track for gaming, and in fact I have signed up for 4 games this time. In 2019 the con was a lot more bustling and with a lot more OSR stuff going on. This year things are a bit more subdued, mostly for obvious pandemic-related reasons affecting numbers in the past few years.

Game 1 - Dr. Penderghast Must DIE!

First thing I played in was a DCC level-0 Funnel. Some teenagers from our local Carpathian village have been kidnapped by Dr. Penderghast, so off we go to form an angry mob and storm his mansion. The game was a fairly typical Funnel fare - lots of deaths, lots of traps and things jumping at you from places you would not expect them to (best one probably being a stained glass window depicting knights and demons animating those figures and coming down to fight us). 

The finally encounter with the doctor was a suitably dramatic thing - his Beast, a giant two-headed gorilla rampaging as we are desparately trying to free the teens and kill everyone else. The doctor, after being (seemingly) killed shooting lasers out of his eyes and his head splitting in half to reveal a floating brain with eyeballs that kept on fighting. Classic stuff, very much inspired by old Universal horror movies. 

All in all I enjoyed the funnel, even if I don't think it offered anything specificlly unique to the medium. The classic horror themeing works well with DCC Funnels though, so that was definitely a big plus! 

The game was run by Joshua Burnett, who is said he is planning on relesaing this eventually as a third-party DCC module. He has other things already published as well that you can check in the link I just posted. 

Game 2 - Hidden Hand of the Horla, 5th Anniversary 

The second game I played in (starting at 8 pm no less!) was an OSE adventure about exploring a giant hand-shaped tower of the Hand Mage (appropriate) which vanished some 1000 years ago and has now reappeared. 

The game was run by Ryan Thompson of Appandix N Entertainment who is also one of the U-Con orgnizers and the person in charge of the OSR/NSR track for the convention. 

We had 10 players in the game (would have been 12 except some people were too tired to join) and surprisingly we finished the thing in about 2 and a half hours of the 4 alloted. We fought many goatpeople, had a prolonged and frankly silly fight with some flying books (A fight which my fighter simply noped out of, since in the first round of combat 3 of the books rolled fumbles and managed to destroy themselves, so he decided this was not really something worth his time) and winged serpents.

The game was quite snappy, as the GM has plenty of experience running large games (he mentioned he'd run a game for 20 people at one point) and also the module itself was quite compact and clearly useable for a convention game.

That last part is not surprising to me, as the whole "5th anniversary" thing in the title is because this is the 5th year in a row that he's run this module at the convention! 

I really enjoyed this game, and in fact bought the module for it, which I plan on writing up a review of in the near future. The adventure works great as a one-shot, and also has potential setup for a longer, plane-hopping campign (there is apparently another module in the works that ties in with this one). 

Also the game was ran using the GM's own Gateway to Adventure houserules for OSE, including classes like very Gloranthan Duck people, a Leprechun and others. 


So, the first day of the convention was overall quite nice, I will post later today (hopefully) about my Saturday experience! 

The Greylands House Campaign - Sessions 12 and 13

     

Summary 

The party meet with the head priest of the Elemental Chaos cult and discuss a truce and potential alliance. They also get rid of the living statues on level 5. They then go and explore the abandoned prison and spend over a month of downtime preparing for upcoming delves.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 4 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 4 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 4 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear); Bluey (War Dog)

Session Recap

Anna and her warriors returned to act as a guide to the party on the way down into the temple. She showed them how to navigate the parts of level 6 that the temple were establishing as part of their territory along with various hazards (like the room full of gargoyles) to avoid. The group also met some of the other mercenaries employed by the temple, such as a group of magic-users. They also found out a secret door short cut that allowed them to quickly reach the staircase leading down into the temple proper.

The staircase, the party noticed, was quite new construction. Apparently an ooze of some kind had fallen through into the temple during a ceremony, destroying the old staircase and just making a big mess of things in general. 

Once they were down on level 7, the party found themselves in the Temple of Elemental Chaos. The central ritual space looked surprisingly homely with a big ceiling and tapestries on the walls as well as altars and benches. The group were greeted by the head priest, a man by the name of Marek and his entourage. He greeted them the group and offered to go talk in his office. 

Due to the priest politely asking that the animals are not brought into his nice bed chambers and office, Verasha stayed behind to keep them in check, while the rest of the party followed the high priest. Along the way they stopped at the Air Chapel, presided over by Emilia - a hideous harpy that acted as second priestess to Marek. The group then went into their private chambers to discuss what the whole situation was.

Marek explained that their temple was dedicated to the elemental forces of nature itself, the grand and powerful things like hurricanes, fires, earthquake and such that Chaos, being the primal matter of which all existence spawned, created when unbridled and unrestrained. Their beliefs, along with their practice of human sacrifice, was viewed as evil and heretical by the dominant cult of the Sun God, and so they had found themselves out into the Greylands just as many other heretics and pagans have. 

The reasons the temple were offering a truce with the party were two fold. On one hand, the temple recognized the party as not being particularly pious Solarists either (what with one of their members being a Druid), and so Marek felt there was some connection there. The second was the servants of a black wyrm named Dulwin had approached the temple from below, with an offer to submit to their draconic master. The temple had refused and murdered the emissaries, and were seeking allies to help with the inevitable retribution coming from deeper into the dungeon. 

That, combined with the fact that the party were clearly powerful enough to have cleared out and be able to hold the first 4 floors of the structure, was why the temple was now seeking a truce and potential mutual assistance in the future.

After appearing politely receptive to his pitch, the head priest also showed the group around the rest of the temple, as well as saying there was an old abandoned prison that one could access from the temple, that the temple members themselves avoided due to various creepy crawlies seeming to spawn in there. They extended an invitation to the party to go explore it if they wish, and the party took them up on their invitation.

After a week of preparations and rest, the group descended back through the temple and up into the prison. Exploration was slow and careful, which was helpful as the party almost ran directly into a gelatinous cube on two occasions! Luckily their liberal use of Sunfire and retreating+shooting arrows helped dispatch both of those. One even had gotten some very expensive looking jewelry in it, Sun God knows where from. 

Exploring deeper into the prison the party found a door marked with a strange, but ultimately meaningless, symbol and exploring around the place managed to find the button that opens into a secret room containing two coffers. Cautious with what happened the last time someone touched a treasure chest without examining it first. After prodding them with a pole and giving the time for Pipam the Younger to examine them they found the coffers to be locked, but not containing any traps. They opened one to find it containing a splendid bejeweled scroll case. Deciding it was smarter to do this not in the middle of a hostile dungeon, the group dropped off the two coffers by the stairs, and went back to finally unlock and peek what was behind the door with the strange symbol.

As it turns out, that was when a group of the gaunt and strange looking talasum descended on the group, but with a Web spell that von Plarf had recently learned from the Greytown wizard, the group managed to isolate them and deal with them without much trouble. 

Now, finally (again), the group opened the blasted door, finding a bedroom and office beyond it, with a crystal statue in each of the corners. As soon as Zoltan had set foot in the room, the statues (almost predictably) began to move and approach him. The group slammed the door shut and decided to just leave (von Plarf taking a chance to add some extra lines to the sigil on the door, making it appear like a man with a large penis). 

With a big haul from their trip (6080 gp worth of jewels, fancy scroll case, gemstones and coinage) along with a scroll containing some very powerful and useful spells (Continual Light, Knock and Fireball), the group decided to settle in for a long bit of downtime.

Verasha took Baba Tonka and the rest of the animals and travelled back to her hidden village home, where with the help of the head priestess of the Wild Temple, she concocted a ritual that magically enchanted the bear's claws, allowing her to harm things that would normally be untouchable for her. 

While that was going on, Rusty had gone off on tour of the taverns and drinking holes of Greytown, indulging in his compulsive need to sort household goods and arranging their bottles and jugs of alcohol in nice and neat ways, drinking himself into a stupor along the way and then needing to spend over a week of getting the alcohol out of his system.

Von Plarf had settled in to copy the two spells off the scroll that she could cast, and then started to cast Continual Light on a bunch of things, eventually replacing the party's oil lanterns with custom-made hooded lanterns that could house the enchanted glowing coins and have a little door that can be closed to stop the light from coming through. 

Finally, after selling off the jewelry from the gelatinous cubes through her contact in the Thieves Guild, Pipam the Younger met with the Master Thief of the guild and convinced him to allow her to purchase one of the rare Thief's Candles . She also told him about the black wyrm lurking beneath the earth, and the promise of a dragon's horde made the Master Thief say that she and her party could come to talk to him once they decided if they want to approach the monster, and he might be willing to offer them some manpower and assistance in exchange for a cut of the treasure.

GM Observations

An extra long post this time around, because oh man have the last two weeks been a lot. With so many disruptions due to real life the game kind of broke down into several small sessions, as we basically played whenever we could. This is why this is a combined report for what I am at least counting as two distinct sessions, but in practice was more like 5 scattered around the last two weeks. 

So, finally the party made contact with another proper faction in the dungeon, the Temple of Elemental Chaos (no relation to the other Temple of fame. Or maybe there is. They haven't asked. Maybe it's a franchise location?) and are left in a strange position where these guys are clearly very evil (and making little to no attempt to hide it), yet also not someone the party actively needs to fight against either. 

Beyond that, my main observation was that oh boy the prison area had a lot of fights. For a 1 in 8 chance of a wandering monster appearing, the party hit three over the course of the session! That turned out to be a stroke of luck though, as the second gelatinous cube was generated with a frankly absurd amount of treasure carried within it. That's where all that money came from! 

As for the downtime stuff, this was a rather interesting proposition. The party want to go fight some gargoyles. Gargoyles are immune to non-magical attacks. The party has, between all of them, only 3 magical weapons which is probably okay to take on one gargoyle, but more than that would be outright suicidal to try and fight. Plus the party's best fighter, Baba Tonka the grizzly bear, can't hit them.

So using my already existing rules that allows magical characters of level 4 or higher to spend money and time to create minor enchantments on weapons (effectively just giving them a bonus to hit and damage without any other special abilities) I made the ruling that Verasha, being a Druid, could use this same downtime procedure to enchant her bear's claws, rather than one weapon. We also established that the reason the Hidden Village can do that is that they use this magical ritual to enchant the tusks on the war pigs birthed/gifted to them by Svine. 

The other thing I had to make a ruling on is Continual Light. It is such a strange spell. From what I read in the OSR description, the spell is permanent until broken in some way, and can be cast on as many objects as on wishes. This means that with a downtime of a week a magic-user or cleric that has it can effectively remove the need for more mundane lighting from the game. Of course stuff like torches still have the use of being an open flame, and a regular oil lantern can be turned off more easily, but still...what a spell.

In a play by post game I ruled that a magician can only maintain as many Continual Light spells as their level, but that also makes it weird because then you couldn't, say, pay someone else to cast it for you. Or you could be very restrictive and say that only one spell per caster can ever be ongoing, but at that point this is a spell which is cast once and then never again, making it kind of a lame proposition. 

I will have to figure out how I want to rule this in future games, but for this looser house game that this campaign is, it is fine. 

Houndmaster, an OSE Class

This was born out of a discussion with my partner, broadly on the topic of having the Druid-style play of animals as followers, but getting rid of the spells and other such trappings.

Combined with my love for the class of the same name from the Darkest Dungeon, and here we have it! Also in my game I plan on removing the default 11 morale score for War Dogs (as per Advanced OSE) and instead have them use normal follower morale, since that makes the Houndmaster’s ability more notable.

The Houndmaster

Requirements: None
Hit Dice: 1d6
Maximum Levels: 10
Weapons and Armor: Houndmasters can use any weapon, and can wear all armor except plate. They can’t use shields.

Description

Houndmasters are people who have an almost supernatural bond with dogs. They know how to train and command them better than anyone and are often the ones developing new breeds of dogs. Often found in the courts of rulers or nobles who enjoy dogs, the Houndmaster can also be found out adventuring with their four legged friends. 

In the Greylands Houndmasters have a strong inclination towards Beast worship, maintaining small shrines and giving offerings to Brother Dog.

Abilities

Animal Bond: You feel a strong bond with your dogs. As a result you can’t have non-dog followers. You can have a maximum of 3 dogs with you at first level, and then +1 to that maximum for every 2 levels after that (so 4 at level 3, 5 at level 5, 6 at level 7, etc).

Special Training: Under your care and training hunting dogs and war dogs become a lot more effective and dangerous. They gain the following benefits.

• Your dogs have their morale set at 11.
• Your dogs add your character level to their max HP
• Your dogs add your character level to their damage rolls
• At level 5 your dogs get +2 to their to hit rolls. At level 9 that bonus increases to +5

Emotional Support Dog: Once you reach level 2 you can designate one of your hounds to be your support dog. Once per day, you can spend a turn petting and soothing your support dog, allowing you to restore 1d3 HP both to yourself and to it. If your support dog dies you lose 1d4 hit points (this can’t bring you below 1 HP and can’t kill you). You must spend a downtime action to train a new dog for the role.

Level Progression

Experience requirements like Magic-user, attack bonuses and saving throws like Cleric

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 11

    

Summary 

Level 5 of the dungeon is explored further, then during downtime the party is visited by the strange warriors they met earlier, clearing up some more details of their background.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 4 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 4 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 3 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear) and 3 War Hounds

Session Recap

Continuing where the last session left off, the party regrouped after their encounters with the strange emaciated talasumi and decided to explore some more of the dungeon level. They found a room with floating candles close to where they were, but decided to instead focus on exploring more of the level and go back to the candles later.

Further exploration brought them to the odd encampment of small and fuzzy creatures (kobolds) living in a series of hanging platforms above the dungeon floor and away from the dangerous denizens of the place. Some friendly chatter, gifts of seed cakes, and general banter ensued, interrupted by a jiggling mass slowly approaching the group.

Realizing that the Gelatinous Cube was actually too slow to really catch up with them, the group proceeded to retreat and kite the thing with arrows and Sunfire, destroying it in the process and claiming a curious golden ring from the jelly-like slop left after the thing melted away.

Further exploration led them to a room of mirrors and an odd staff hovering in the center of it. Cautious of any obvious traps, the group approached the  staff, only to find that the reason for it hovering mid-air was that it was, again, in the middle of another Gelatinous Cube. This time the thing had somehow managed to get the drop on them (by remaining perfectly still in the middle of a room, no less! Devious thing that it was) and so the group instead relied on their usual Bear-focused strategy, with Baba Tonka ripping apart the thing in a round. 

With the obviously magical staff retrieved the group found a room with iron statues in it, two of which rather predictably turned out to be alive. However with some quick thinking (and slow movement of the statues) the party simply...closed the door in front of them. The statues then happily returned back to their pedestals, clearly uninterested in pursuit. 

Finally, with some poking and prodding of candles the group realized that they would naturally levitate when light up, otherwise acting as normal candles that do not appear to burn out. Gathering them all, the characters were satisfied and headed back up to the surface.

The haul from this run was quite good, and so the group felt happy to spend some of that cash on identifying the magical ring as well as figuring out what the staff's deal is. The priests of the Greytown Church explained that the staff was able to heal people with a touch, while Frantishek the Magician, the local high level magic-user of the town, found out that the ring was actually a cursed Ring of Weakness and offered to buy it off the party, along with the floating candles. He explained that the ring was actually exactly the kind of stuff his contacts back in the Imperial core got asked for by their clients, while the candles he just personally found neat and wanted to use them around his tower.

Most importantly, the group now had the extra funds on hand to go talk to the builder's guild and arrange for the construction to begin in earnest on restoring the fortified manor. To make sure they don't get any surprises, they also hired a pair of men-at-arms to hang out there and keep a watch out.

While back at their manor and preparing things for the builders to begin work, the characters were approached by Anna, the fighter that lead the group of plate-clad warriors the party had encountered earlier. She told them that she and her men were working as muscle for an underground temple dedicated to the four elements, and that the head priest was interesting in talking to the party and wanted to ask them for help (with what, she didn't know, as she was just there to relay the message). 

Also now that Anna was no longer flustered and slightly confused by running into the party in the middle of what was supposed to be a mostly abandoned level of a dungeon, she also gave the general lay of the land as she knew it, and said she'll come back soon to help escort them down to the temple's level and talk to the priests.

GM Observations

So, finishing up the delve from last session wasn't too problematic, with the party getting a very friendly reaction result from the kobolds, fighting a pair of gelatinous cubes (who, with their abysmally low movement, are honestly not THAT much of a threat unless you just stupidly run right into them, and generally got a good amount of loot.

We also finally got around to explaining a bit what the deal was with the warriors they met. The players had been very confused about what had just happened, and if these warriors were simply just "things"  spawned by the dungeon, if they were rival adventurers or something else entirely. I did not want to reveal too many details before I had figured out what exactly the Elemental Temple actually was going to be about so I kept things vague which contributed to the confusion.

After talking things over with people on Discord (thanks folks!) I got a better idea of what the temple wants as a faction, which in turn made it so I can actually figure out how to run them and how they would react to the knowledge of the party's existence. After all, a topic that was brought up during that discussion that I have had on my mind, is just how much information do NPC groups or factions have about the PCs?

You as a referee already know what the players are planning on doing, how they plan on doing it, what resources and personnel they have and so on, and so presenting a competent and devious enemy which also knows these things can get the game into outright hostile GMing territory, since it is a lot easier to just make a group that can outright kill the party if they wanted to.

Obviously that's an extreme case and not really good campaign design, but it is something I've been thinking ever since writing up the rival adventuring party for my previous campaign. 

Thief's Candles

Thief’s Candle

Cost: 150 gold
Description: A small candle of yellow wax. Inside the wax is a preserved finger, wrapped with the candle’s wick. When lit, the candle’s flame is a blue-ish black color.

Effect: When lit and held by a Thief, the candle produces just enough illumination for that person to see in. Nobody else can see the light produced by the candle, except the Thief holding it. The candle can be extinguished and relit many times, just like a normal candle. Otherwise it burns out in 6 turns of continual use.

Background: Thief Guilds are usually seen as little more than crude attempts at organized crime, and they like it when it stays that way. However, they have tricks and secrets of their own that only members know of. One of those are the Thief’s Candles.

The punishment for theft (or association with the Thieves’ Guild) is chopping off the offender’s left hand. The Guild goes to great lengths to collect those, and uses the fingers to produce these artifacts, allowing the fallen member to continue helping the Guild even past death.

Thief’s Candles are seen as a very precious resource for a guild, and the secrets of how to make them rests with the highest leadership of the organisation. Anyone found sharing the secrets of their manufacturing with anyone who isn’t supposed to already know gets put on the Guild’s highest To Do list.

Precious as they are, the Candles are usually sold internally to members at a steep price, or handed out for important Guild business. They allow a thief to freely traverse in (what appears to outsiders) as utter darkness. The item is only a minor magical trinket, so it doesn’t really make the wielder invisible or anything, and creatures or spells that allow one to see in darkness can still show the Thief holding the candle (though still not the candle’s light).

The Primordial Beasts

A recurring bit of worldbuilding that has been going on throughout my Greylands campaign have been the Primordial Beasts - large, quasi-divine animals of varying power and influence.

Unlike the Sun God (who’s religion now dominates the world), and the Wild Gods (who still have pockets of worshipers doggedly holding onto their ways), the Primordial Beasts don’t really offer much in the way of magic to those who follow them, as there simply isn't much there to give. They are barely godlings in their own way, and even then that applies only to some of them.

However that has never stopped some people (contrarians, as they are usually called) from trying anyway. And so the Beasts do occasionally get small pockets of non-animal worshipers.

This has actually caused surprisingly little friction with the Sun God’s followers. After all, while some of the Solar religions are more syncretic than others and incorporate acceptable versions of the Wild Gods, the veneration of Primordial Beasts is such a backwoods and rare occasion that most church leaders simply don’t even believe it to be true. And with how little it produces in terms of tangible effects on reality - who can blame them?

And yet, those who dedicate themselves to a Primordial Beast do get a small benefit or two from it. As such, below I will explore in some more detail the three Primordial Beasts that players have encountered so far throughout the campaign, and what (if any) potential powers aligning yourself with them can bring you. Who knows, maybe it’ll be something players are interested in doing in the campaign.

Simple Rules for Beast Worship

A character who devotes themselves to the veneration of a Primordial Beast must spend at least one downtime action per month in maintaining a shrine to the beast in question, offer sacrifices and generally refrain from harming normal animals of the appropriate type, save for ways allowed by the Primordial Beast in question.

Failing to follow these duties for 6 months or longer simply withers away the connection. Depending on what boons the devotee was granted, they may or may not still keep them anyway - the Primordial Beasts usually don’t have enough divine power to exert punishment. Faith is lost not through grand gestures, but through apathy.

Medved (Bear)

Description: The Master of the War Bears is arguably the single most potent and powerful of the Primordial Beasts currently alive. He still causes fear and respect in humanity, for those were instilled within their collective unconscious very firmly in the old and hazy past. He keeps them current too by the presence of his favored children, the War Bears.

Medved likes to travel a lot, usually setting up camp in some border territory or forgotten piece of unfinished Chaos and spends his days in leisure, merriment and laziness. He has enough personal magical power that he can change his appearance at will. When dealing with humans he often makes a point to appear as a large, hairy, bearded, and usually buck naked, man. In most other cases he appears as an impressively massive brown bear with a golden shine to his fur.

 
Cult Requirements: Being a man’s man (in every way you can imagine), Medved greatly prefers and favors male characters, however he will still accept anyone’s veneration if given.

Boons: Characters that worship Medved get +1 to reaction rolls when interacting with War Bears and +1 to the morale of War Bear hirelings. Furthermore if the character is looking for new hirelings and there are War Bears around, at least one will always be willing to consider joining them (and only them).

A devotee of Medved of level 2 or greater can also temporarily set their Strength to 18 and perform Feats of Strength (ripping off doors, hurling small boulders, bending iron bars etc) for 1d4-1 turns (the -1 is because Medved sometimes just zones out and forgets about you). They can use this power once per day.

Markings: Male, non-ursine members of the cult find themselves becoming noticeably hairy over time.

Svine (Swine)

Description: Svine is a minor Primordial Beast, really little more than a very big and ponderous swine with a faint aura of magic around her. She is quite happy with that, as humanity keeps her children well fed and taken care of, breeding more and more of them all the time. Sure, the wilder ones tend to get hunted down and killed, but that is how life goes.

Her current residence and center of power, if you can even call it that, is a small commune of Wild Gods-worshipping pagans living in the magically desiccated zone known as the Greylands. She is given veneration, offerings and worship by these people as well as physically taken care of by them.

Svine appears as a fat and quite large swine, covered in glittering fur and with shining tusks. She does not have the power (or the desire) to change her shape.

Cult Requirements: None

Boons: Svine is willing to grant some of her larger and more aggressive children to aid her followers. These War Boars have the same stats as the monster entry. A devotee may have as many war boars for followers as their character level.

War Boars do not require upkeep, still take up a follower slot, and as long as treated well will never abandon the person they follow, even if that person stops being a devotee of Svine.

Markings: Especially devoted followers sometimes find themselves granted boar heads in place of their usual faces. The effect is only ever temporary though, lasting for several months to a year at most.

Vuycho Vulk/Uncle Wolf (Wolf)

Description: Uncle Wolf was once as powerful as Medved is now, if not even more so. His presence sent humans fleeing in terror, for they knew that his arrival heralded only bloody death for them and their kin. His family to this day are feared by humans, even if not respected much and though humanity keeps trying to eradicate them, wolves are smart and also know the value of cooperation just as well as humans do.

In his day he was able to freely turn himself into multiple forms - a human warrior, a giant wolf, a large black shadow that stalked the night. He cut his way through entire kingdoms, gorging himself on their livestock, their children and everything else he wished.

That all changed once he got himself killed. Nowadays Uncle Wolf is barely venerated or worshiped at all. Oh sure, human mothers still use his name to scare their pups into obedience, but in reality he can’t do shit to anyone anymore. And yet, he still persists. Despite being dead, his aura of fear is still there, still lingering in the primal parts of the human brain.

He has mellowed out significantly since being decapitated - not having a physical body makes it hard to revel in bloodlust and carnage like he used to. Nowadays he is just happy for anyone to remember him and leave him an offering once in a while.

Cult Requirements: Vuycho Vulk still pines for the good old days and so will generally only grant boons to warriors or at a pinch, thieves. War Bears can join, because he finds it deeply amusing.

Boons: Once per day, a devotee of Uncle Wolf can channel that deep-seated fear in any targets they choose within a 20ft radius. Those targets all have to immediately make a morale check, and if failed will stop whatever they’re doing and flee in terror. This ability does not work on the undead or, for that matter, on wolves.

Markings: No overt ones, though devoted followers of Uncle Wolf just make humans around them kind of uncomfortable, even if people can’t quite place why.

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 10

   

Summary 

The party continue with preparations for winter and the explore the next level of the dungeon, meeting some very strange people.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 4 Druid 
• Pipam the Younger - Level 4 Thief
• von Plarf - Level 3 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 3 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 3 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Grub (Verasha's other war boar); Alois (Porter and Cook); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); Tatana (Woman-at-Arms); Baba Tonka (a brown bear) and 3 War Hounds

Session Recap

Deciding to spend some of the money well earned from the last delve, von Plarf decided to spend some of it on herself, going on a two week carousing bender that ended up with her leveling up.. and also incurring a 600 gp debt after a botched game of dice with some other adventurers in Greytown.

While she was busy doing that, the rest of the party focused on preparing for the winter and securing the dungeon. With the first four floors now very firmly under their control (and the control of their allies), the party brought in workers to build a wall and solid stone door, restricting access to level 5 of the dungeon. With some of the beefier talasumi put to guard duty, the group ventured further down, now knowing they have a safe route to retreat.

The first thing they discovered is that the dungeon was now markedly different on the fifth level. The walls and floor looked different from the catacombs above or the caves that connected to them. They also discovered the source of the gusts of wind - two sizable holes in the floor producing a constant stream of wind and seeming to have no bottom. The walls of the dugeon were also carved with gargoyle faces, with holes placed in their mouths producing a constant whistling or howling sound. They also found some strange tapestries hanging on the walls in one of the rooms, their designs seeming a bit nonsensical as if created by a shitty AI image generation software. They decided they wanted those for their future manor so took them down and stored them for later.

Exploring the dungeon the group ran into a room containing a pair of carion carcass crawlers, easily dispatched through a Sleep spell. Going through their disgusting nest and feeding room the party found the half-devoured remains of some soldiers, one of which carrying a strangely ornate and distinctive shield. It was quartered and with each quarter designed with ornate reliefs depicting the elements of Fire, Water, Earth and Air. Picking up the shield and loot from the room the group ventured east, and found what looked to be the fallen warriors' companions. Four fighters, all clad in full suits of plate armor and bearing simplified versions of the quartered shield, approached them. 

Both groups were rather suspicious and mildly confused of each other. The party had no idea how these people had gotten down here without going through the upper floors, the warriors in turn were very tight-lipped and refusing to answer questions. After some stilted attempts at negotiations (how do you do that when one party simply refuses to talk?) the leader of the warriors, a woman named Anna, brought over some more plate-clad warriors and the two groups returned above ground, going through the upper floors.

As they emerged in the ruins of the manor, the warriors left towards Greytown, though taking an odd route to get there. The party were all thoroughly confused s to what had just occurred, but decided to not worry about it too much and simply went back down to continue exploring level 5.

After having to disable several traps, the group found themselves in a room with some more gargoyles. Instead of the obvious attack by the gargoyles, however, the group were ambushed by four strange looking talasum that emerged from behind the statues. These looked gaunt and off, like badly taxidermied versions of the shaggy beings the party had allied with, their eyes being dull and not very reflective. The quartet were also completely silent, not saying anything as they paralyzed Rusty and attacked the others, eventually being ripped apart by Baba Tonka and missile fire. 

Since the party were stuck waiting for Rusty to snap out of his paralysis, they decided to spend the following turns poking around the room, and indeed they found a trapped and locked container within the mouth of one of the gargoyles, getting some solid treasure from there. They were interrupted by another one of the oddly gaunt talasum, but it was quickly dispatched by liberal application of animals and steel.

GM Observations

Another session of pausing the game in the dungeon. It still feels a bit weird, having been very strict about ending games back in town or at least a safe location for my previous two campaigns. 

This session also presents a shift for the campaign overall. Not only have the group secured the first 4 floors of the dungeon, cut off access to the 5th and gotten enough funds to get their manor built, but the 5th floor and onwards is when Dyson's Delve starts to get a lot more complex in the relation between the various factions within it. The strange warriors the party encountered being one such.

For me the reason I played them as oblique and refusing to answer questions (while asking plenty of their own) was two-fold. Part of it is simply that they are similarly trying to learn about the party as the party was trying to learn about them. And part of it is that they represent a larger faction within the dungeon that I have yet to quite figure out how will react to the actions of the players in the past 10 sessions and what that means for the dungeon itself.

This has been a consistent issue for me as a Referee in both previous campaigns. At about session 10 or so, the party usually have started to properly set themselves up as parts of the campaign's setting, having goals and having interactions with enough various factions that the game's position becomes rather complex. 

That is, of course, one of the beauties of sandbox campaigns as opposed to plot-focused affairs. A plot never becomes much more complicated than it was at the beginning, since ultimately the players are there to simply walk their way through it, rather than create it. Conversely, a sandbox game can generate quite complicated and complex situations that are more or less unique to each group of players that play in it.

And as one of the main problems I always fight with as a Referee is becoming overwhelmed by having to keep track of too many things, that has been a problem for me as well. In this specific case I have intentionally kept the campaign very tightly focused on the dungeon under the manor, plus I've not done a lot of radical changes in the dungeon itself based on the actions of the players. And that has worked well so far, but now the game is reaching a state where that will begin to actively break the fiction of what has happened in the past 10 sessions. The Dungeon, and the setting by extension, simply has to respond. 

It ties into a broader problem of me not having the mental load to do much scheming and plotting and figuring out the moving pieces, due to a combination of life and also running a play-by-post game simultaneously. The PbP game is now over, so I am hopeful that will give me the bandwidth to properly let this campaign become more reactive and from there - living. We will see how that goes.

Further thoughts on Experience Gain in a megadungeon campaign

 Consider this a sort of part 2 to this previous post. After reading through some articles regarding alternate experience gain methods in the context of OSR play (notably this one from Ben L.) as well as the comments under said articles, it got me thinking of a potential alternative approach.

Now, to be clear, as with the previous post, experience for treasure recovered is good, fine and works great. However, I can't help myself when it comes to tinkering of this sort, so please indulge me on this one.

First off, an important piece of context - I am thinking of this solely in relating to an open table megadungeon-focused campaign. For broader sandbox play, this might not work great (almost certainly won't in fact) and for a consistent player group it is meaningless, and you might as well use modern day milestones where you just get experience because the GM decided to give you some. So keep that in mind.

The basic setup is this: For every session in which the party has delved into the megadungeon, each character participating in that delve gets N experience points. 

Yeah yeah, xp for just participating, boo boo the man. But let us actually think about this. XP for GP is good because it presents a simple, clear and transparent framework for character advancement tied directly to playing the game. You play the game, you go in the dungeon, you find treasure, you get exp.  The function of XP for GP is to give players a direction at least initially on what to do in the campaign - go find you some treasure! You get experience for, in short, playing the game! (The game, in this case, being location-based exploration, a.k.a. dungeon crawling) 

So the thing above simply cuts out the middle man. You get experience for going into the dungeon and not dying. The amount is simply decoupled from the treasure you returned with or the enemies you defeated or the McGuffins you diddled or whatever other scheme. The more you play, and the more consistent you are in being part of the game, the more experience your character will get, while also risking more opportunities for that character to die.....oh wait, that's just what getting experience for treasure and monsters already does!

Discussing this general concept both on Discord (hello!) and with my partner also helped me crystalize some of the questions, issues and solutions this brings.

1. This is not experience for "just showing up". 

You only get experience for a session in which the party actually went adventuring into the dungeon, thus exposing themselves to the risk of character death. Sessions set during downtime or focused on the town do not give XP, just like they don't under XP for GP

2. This method flattens out the ups and downs of treasure based xp gain.

An aspect of XP for GP is that it is basically never consistent. In some sessions the party pulls nothing out of the dungeon, in others they hit a motherload and get a ton of xp in one chunk. This method flattens that out to an even number. This is not necessarily better or worse, just different. Missing a session (which should not be too punishing in an open table campaign) in which the party found a ton of treasure now doesn't seriously kneecap your character's XP growth. However you still don't get to have any of that actual money for the treasure, so there is still some consequence, just not as sever one in xp.

3. This should not invalidate gathering treasure and resource management.

Finding treasure will likely still be the focus for most of the player character. After all, you have living expenses, or maybe the characters want to make items, scrolls, research magic, build a base of operations, help the community, do any of that fabled Domain Game stuff. Well that stuff still costs money (it makes the world go round!) and the reckless endangerment to oneself for the possibility of finding more money than a peasant will ever see in their life is still present. Just that that aspect is now no longer tied directly to experience gain and level progression is all.

This means that balancing the party's finances, figuring out hiring retainers, figuring out how to haul expensive but problematic items out of the dungeon, all of that stuff is still present. It just does not affect your xp. That's all.

4. Number go up!!

Look, people like it when numbers go up. That is a fact of life and a fact of gaming. The reasons behind it are deep, numerous and way beyond my artist-level brain can comprehend fully. But people like it when number go up. Well this makes it so number goes up, while also avoiding some of the previously discussed relations to treasure. 

Pictured: Every D&D player.

5. Motivation for play is not related to specific in-game activity.

This one is, again, not inherently a better or worse thing, just a different thing. People have observed in plenty of blogposts, that XP for GP being your primary way of leveling up (a thing you want to do in D&D, because that's what you do in D&D) leads logically to specific types of motivations and actions. Picaresque tales of rogues and other adventurer types, focus on hauling everything not nailed down (and prying the stuff that is) and so on. That is loads of fun, of course! 

However in this case this allows me to simply take a bit more of a meta look at the situation. The thing that I want people to do, is to play in my megadungeon campaign. The whys and hows of the motivations of their PCs then don't entirely matter to me when it comes to that goal. Your character can have whatever possible reason you can think of to venture into the dungeon - that is fine by me. What I want from you is that you go into the dungeon. This, again, cuts out the middleman and simply gets to the point. We are playing a game. Let's play that game.

6. This does not preclude other methods of earning experience.

Just because you get a steady flow of the Good Stuff for every session you shove your PC in the megadungeon, doesn't mean there can't or won't be other methods to earn XP. Specific objectives, quests, goals whatever you want to call them, that can give a higher (but one-off) experience to the party. This still keeps the relation between risk and experience gain. Every time you go in the megadungeon there is a background noise level of risk to your character, so you get an appropriate amount of experience. When you go do something particularly risky you get more experience. This still maps to how older D&D functions - more powerful enemies give more experience, because they are riskier to deal with. 

7. It makes it a bit less of a headache to figure out the campaign's pacing.

A question that always comes when making a dungeon is "how much treasure do I put in here?" Because that question ultimately is "how much experience do I want the PCs to earn from this?". And we know that that is what it means, because it is straight up stated in so many words in B/X. So again, why not simply address it directly. 

I still need to figure out how much treasure certain parts of the megadungeon should have, but now the treasure can be a lot more interesting, weird and maybe not as expensive. And I don't have to calculate it based on party numbers and levels etc. No, everyone just gets some experience for delving into the murderhole.

Of course, this still leaves the question - okay, so how much is N in that sentence up there on top? Well, I don't know. If we make it, say, 100, that means that a level 1 Fighter will need 20 sessions to get to level 2. That is probably slower than it is reasonable for most people in our day and age. However, I also don't want it to be too high and get to a point where I have been with my other campaigns, of character levels outpacing my capacity as a referee to figure out what to do with the game.

So I also had an interesting idea on how to help with the pacing. Let's use that 100 xp for our example. From level 1 to, say, level 5 your character gets 100 xp per delve. However from level 5 to, say, level 7 they now only earn 75. Or 50. progress slows down, without me needing to still shovel kingly sums of money at the party just to even get that much. So okay, you get to level 7. Well from here on out, you get 25 exp per delve. The game slows even further, it stretches out. However that is fine, as the stretching out happens in what most people consider the "sweet spot" for a lot of D&D, old or new. So getting a character to level 9 or 10 is still a challenge and an actual achievement. 

This is hardly original - Empire of the Petal Throne famous does that too. This method also means that, due to this being an open table, a brand new character joining a higher level party into the dungeon can catch up relatively fast to them, as they will simply gain more experience. 

I know the OSR has had this weird obsession with low level play (and low level play has plenty of charms in it too), and I know the reactionary contingent (or as they are better called - living shitstains) have kind of monopolized the interest in higher level play, but....it doesn't have to be that way you know? Levels 3 to ~5 or 7 is fun. Magic-Users get fireball, Fighters can still dish out damage, but can take a few more hits, Thieves become barely competent (barely), etc. Also at that point the players have usually figured out for themselves what it is they want out of the campaign and can pursue their own goals and have most of the tools to do so. 

Again, all these numbers will need a lot of tweaking. But that can happen as play happens. It is the easiest part of designing systems, and the hardest at the same time. But RPGs are much more forgiving than, say, board games or card games, when it comes to number tweaking. 

So, that is where I have this idea developed so far. The more I think about it, the more I seem to convince myself it has legs, so I might end up going with it at least initially. And if it doesn't work, or feels lame or flat? Guess what, it's my fucking campaign I can just go back to XP for GP and it won't really matter!