The Sun God's Church in Mordavia

The Mordavian Church (full name: Church of Our Most Beloved Sun God of the Princedom of Mordavia) is the dominant religious sect of the Mordavia princedom. Though a deeply conservative-to-the-point-of-atavism branch of the Sun religion, a protracted (and shockingly bloody) 50 odd years long campaign within the church’s clerical structure has caused some major shake ups within it.

A much more egalitarian branch (The Sun-Encompassing Humano-totalists) has emerged through public debates, agitation among the Peasantry and Nobility (the Bourgeoisie being considered a lost cause) and multiple semi-spontaneous short and brutal wars. They now nominally hold control of the church hierarchy, with most the higher level positions filled by once disregarded priestesses of the Sun God, and with female clergy becoming much more prominent in various parts of the princedom.

Their only problem, however, is Supreme Patriarch Slunceslav the XVth, current head of the Mordavian Church and a veritable ancient at the, frankly absurd, age of 133. While the internal laws of the church have been amended to put in an alternating genders clause for the top seat, Slunceslav continues to squat on the hopefully soon-to-be-Matriarchal Throne like a bearded cross between a vulture and a sloth. 

Over just the past year there have been over a dozen attempts to assassinate him or in some way remove him from his position, but he continues to hold onto it with the sort of dogged stubbornness that can only come with being that old.

As such, most of the lower ranks of the church appear simply happy to sit and wait, while muttering potentially heretical prayers to the Sun God to please, for fuck’s sake, take his most blessed servant into his embrace already, thank you good day.





Their prayers yet stay unheard.

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 4

Summary 

The party helps von Plarf with her divinely ordained quest. In the process they meet the remains of one a godling and get their first magical weapon!

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 2 Druid 
• Pipam - Level 2 Illusionist
• von Plarf - Level 1 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 2 Dwarf
• "Rusty" the Talasum - Level 1 Fighter

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Jan "the Hard Up" (Torchbearer); Ludwig (Porter); Adam (Man-at-Arms); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms) and 3 War Hounds

"Rusty" the Talasum, art by Ellie.

Session Recap

At the end of the last session, von Plarf had gone carousing and gotten herself into some drunken shenanigans and for better or worse her payers to the Sun God were heard and she was saved...and tasked with a divine Quest. 

The quest sounded fairly straightforward - head south, near the Barrows, and find a hill with an old abandoned shrine to the Sun God on it. Underneath this shrine were the burial chambers of one Maximillian the Girthy, a pagan warlord that about a century ago fought one of the mortal avatars/heroic incarnations of the Sun God and in one of his victories managed to steal that hero's sun pendant. Von Plarf was tasked to retrieve the pendant and the skull of Maximillian and bring those to be buried in properly consecrated ground under the church in Greytown (The shrine itself had been abandoned for a while ever since the Chaotic event that left the Greylands in their current state).

Gathering up the rest of the party, the group set out south, making sure to skirt around the magical mists of the Barrows. Soon they spotted the lonely shrine next to an old oak tree and made their way there. The shrine was unfortunately infested with some fire beetles, which the party quickly slew (the beetles were mostly just minding their own business so it wasn't exactly much of a fight) in order to harvest their strange glowing nodules.

The party also noticed that the stone slab which leads down into the actual tomb was dragged aside and the tomb was wide open. Using a piece of rope the party descended down, save for Jaro the pig who absolutely refused to have a rope tied around him, instead jumping down into the hole and landing on Zoltan. 

The party explored the tomb, finding a secret door behind a shelf of old pottery and grave goods. The room it lead to seemed to contain a gaggle of drunk bandits, who either out of friendliness or inebriation mostly just chatted with the party and told them they're welcome to go do whatever they want in the rest of the tomb, and warned them to mind the hole down the hallway. Jaro, being a pig, couldn't heed the warnings though and so ended up falling into the pit trap and having to be dragged out by Verasha and the rest of the party.

As that was going on an elf and a squat, deeply ugly looking man walked by, chuckling at the absurd scene unfolding in front of them and demanding to know why the party were here. When they learned the party was interested in Maximillian's grave and not the bandits, they let them be, laughing as they went to join the rest of the bandit group.

Heading down a trap door and into another floor of the tomb the party was ambushed by a pair of bright red centipedes and von Plarf, in a bit of panic, simply put them (and Zoltan) to sleep before finishing them off and waking her dwarf butler. The party also found a pair of dead bandits, seemingly suffocated from something, in front of an ominous round stone slab door with a wolf engraved on it. Investigating the door, Pipam found there were some fungi with little balloon-like nodules on them growing all around the door - likely the reason for the two dead bandits.

Deciding to check out the one room they hadn't checked first, the party found a stone altar flanked by two stone braziers and with a wolf pelt and a carved wolf skull sitting on the altar. As they approached it the braziers and the wolf skull's eyes all burst into blue magical flames and the voice of Uncle Wolf, one of the Primordial Beasts, spoke to them. 

Verasha made an offering to the skull and chatted with Uncle Wolf, who explained that it had been quite a while since anyone has actually given him any offerings or attention (noting that the closest shrine of his has a congregation of one mostly crazy old man and two squirrels) and was happy to have someone talk to him again. Verasha offered to bring the pelt and skull back to her village, where they still worship the Primordial Beasts, and Uncle Wolf was grateful for the opportunity to have someone remember him again. In return he offered to answer the party a question. They asked him if the fungi in the next room over were dangerous, to which he replied yes.

Using oil and some flame the party set the fungi on fire, managing to destroy them without any spores getting in the air. Rolling away the stone slab, Maximillian the Girthy, who was now turned into a ghoul, and the skeletal remains of his combat bothers rose up to attack. The party were quicker and managed to roll the slab back so that only one enemy at a time can actually leave the burial chambers, and then proceeded to rip both Maximillian and his skeletons to shreds. 

Victorious the party severed his had, took the sun medallion he was wearing, claimed his nice looking two-handed sword and even gave Walter the Man-at-Arms the former warlord's chain armor. 

After they were done looting the place, the party decided that they didn't want to let the bandits off the hook, so went back upstairs, kicked the door in and proceeded to attack. The bandits, despite being quite plastered, managed to organize themselves, while the elf Charmed von Plarf, his ugly toady managing to magically scare away Jaro the boar, and then a big melee starting in which the trio of wardogs proceeded to rip the bandits apart. Pipam used a spell in turn to scare away the Toady who managed to run away and escape the tomb (and the wardogs), the elf surrendering instead. 

The party tied up the elf and said "Well, what do you have to say for yourself?" to which the elf, rather indignantly, pointed out that they had just attacked him and his men completely unprovoked. The party agreed, but also didn't' really want this guy around to cause trouble in the future. Verasha slid behind him and slit his throat, whispering "This is for laughing at my pig." 

Returning home from the expedition the group delivered the head and medallion to the church, where the priests promised to get them buried and properly kept safe. Pipam, in turn, did some alchemy and combined the liquid from the fire beetles' nodules with some of the oil to create a potent mixture known as Sun Fire.

GM Observations

So with that quest result because of the carousing mishaps table, I was kind of stumped as to what to do. So when in doubt, I looked for a one-page adventure or dungeon, and decided to use the Burial Mound of Gilliard Wolfclan while tweaking details and enemies to make it fit better with the setting. 

This also gave me a chance to do some more worldbuilding and setting definition in the form of Uncle Wolf. In my ongoing process of ripping off all the good ideas Chris Kutalik has had, I decided that in my setting there also are powerful primordial animals. 

Unlike in the Hill Cantons though, the Primordial Beasts in the Greylands are not as powerful, being very minor godlings of varying power, with almost no worshipers in the present day, and never really providing any actual spells to their worshipers. Svine, the pig that Verasha's people worship, is one such Primordial Beast, same as Medved (who unlike the Hill Cantons is not an amalgam, but simply powerful enough to also be able to shape change into a human form, among other things). Uncle Wolf was therefore another one, though he also has the major disadvantage of being dead, and so being mostly a fragment of the spirit of his old self, residing in the handful of scattered shrines to him around the world. 

The one page dungeon itself was fine and got the job done, the party were oddly bloodthirsty when dealing with the bandits as compared to the goblins under the boyar's manor, but that's how things go sometimes. The toady managed to escape though, so I suspect he might make another appearance down the line, a good way to tie this into the broader setting.

The fire beetles being used to make better firebombs was a thing I used in my first Greylands game too, where the goblins of the manor ended up using those to try and push back the adventuring party after repeated attacks. The main difference between Sun Fire and just regular burning oil is that burning oil does 1d8 damage, while Sun Fire does 2d6 and also is way way more sticky, essentially acting as napalm.

Speaking of burning oil, actually, while I decided to not use it in my OD&D game, I honestly kind of like it as a tool that players can have, and so I think I'll stick to it with the Greylands. And yes, this really is the same oil used to light lanterns...and yes, that does definitely mean that there are a lot of house fires all across the setting. It's something people just learn to live with.

Brainstorming - Experience Gain in a megadungeon campaign.

((Edit: You can find a sort of Part 2 to this here.))

This is going to be a much much looser post than I usually do, as I am going to use this to go through a brainstorming process regarding, well, experience gain in the context of a megadungeon-focused campaign.

I am planning on my next in-person game that I organize to be in my Greylands world, and focus on megadungeon exploration. My goal is to not use a published one, but actually work on creating the tools and procedures to create, stock, restock and run my own megadungeon. 

As part of this process I am also going to be doing a whole bunch of rewrites of the OSE house rules I used for my previous and current Greylands games. Stuff like how encumbrance works, tweaks to armor and armor class, maybe use a different magic system than the standard B/X spell list (but also not just use W&W again, I tried that already), the list goes on. 

One of the things on my mind in that vein is experience gain. I am definitely not the first( nor will I be the last) person to observe that with the amounts required to level up in B/X and with the consideration that 75 to 90% of that experience comes from recovering treasure, the amount of money the party builds up after 1-2 levels is just absurd to the point of rendering it meaningless. Things like carousing, training and conspicuous consumption are ways the OSR has dealt with this conundrum.

My thought was to keep the 1 moneys worth of treasure = 1 experience point (probably not gp, I want to move to silver in the Greylands setting, with gold coins essentially being an alternate resource you need for certain services or items),  but slash all the numbers involved by 10. So a Fighter now needs 200 experience points to get to level 2, but also the treasure is slashed by 10 as well. This way money does not become as useless as fast. 

But I have also had another thought - is money for exp actually the way I want to handle experience gain and advancement in this game? After all, there are many other ways to gain levels in an OSR game. While I have been sticking to money for exp so far in my campaigns, I have been thinking what else could I do.

First off, I want to make sure I stick to goal-focused experience gain. What does and what doesn't give experience needs to be clearly defined and written out so that players at any point know exactly what action will or will not garner them experience, and how much if it does. To me this is a non-negotiable aspect of the process. 

However, as you can see from the links above, there are plenty of other goals. I also did some of that in my BSSS campaign when the players stormed the gatehouse. That worked fine for a single very focused mission, but for a megadungeon? A location you are supposed to revisit again and again and again during a campaign? I dunno.

Money and treasure are still going to be important - after all resources get expended and need replacing, hirelings need to be paid, food and shelter must be secured and so on. 

Another option I have considered is one I've heard of or seen mentioned in passing used in other games - experience for exploration. Be it every hex or point on a map, or perhaps every room or floor or section of a megadungeon? That could work! This provides a good and clear goal, however it is a tad wishy washy. After all, what counts as "exploring" a room? If a room has a secret door and a treasure, do the players get experience for finding either or only if they find both? If the latter, wouldn't that just lead to overly slow and boring gameplay? Methodical exploration is cool and all, but it still needs to be enjoyable, this is a game after all.

I have had it suggested to me (on discord, I think?) that maybe instead the party gets experience for each room they visit, but it starts low and grows from there. So the first, say, 2 rooms give nothing. The third gives 10 exp. The fourth 20, the fifth 30, the sixth 40, etc. But once the party leave the dungeon, the count is reset. This in turn I think would incentivize riskier delves into the dungeon, trying to cover as much ground as possible, but it might lead to ignoring a lot of the actual dungeon that's around. It does provide a clearer goal than the previous exploration method though!

Yet another option - zones cleared and secured. The megadungeon in my game is (at least as of time of writing) going to be of the supernatural incursion type. A common trope, sure, but one that I enjoy, the dungeon as an alien thing intruding upon reality.  I hope to have thematic sections in my megadungeon, since those are always fun, and I figure each section would be between 5 and maybe 10-12 rooms each, and so securing that section, clearing it of monsters and making sure they can't really reestablish a foothold in it can provide a big and solid chunk towards leveling. 

That works, but...again - the goal is vague and ultimately depends on my fiat as a referee to declare when a section is or is "cleared". I don't like that. Plus, this means that I can't simply restock and refill and rearrange things in the megadungeon, as that would negate the progress of the PCs. 

A separate question to ponder - experience for killing enemies. A possibility, though one I don't really plan on entertaining too much. It turns a lot of gameplay into a near constant combat, and I have written a few words about my opinion on combat in dungeon crawling games.

What else then...perhaps each level of the dungeon has a certain number of special elements - idols, objects, altars, weird alien dungeon organs, winged monkeys whatever, that if destroyed will both help weaken that level (or sector?) of the dungeon and provide experience, and most importantly - will not return even during restocking. A bit better in terms of goals, as it provides a clear and non-ambiguous object and interaction with that object (loot, destroy, desecrate, whatever).

These can also be different - perhaps the underground garden's experience can be gained only if you find and cut out the central root core of the trees in it. But in order to get the experience for the halls of marbled salt you need to destroy the crystal that spawns the salt golems? That could be interesting and provide me with potential ways to make the dungeon fresh for the players.

Another issue entirely is that of numbers. Even if I just stick with money for exp, how much treasure do I put in the dungeon? That's a huge question and one who's answer can have major repercussions about the campaign. To a smaller extent this also goes for the exploration EXP - how much do you earn for that?

Obviously this doesn't have to be a single form of advancement. I will probably combine some of these, giving 2 or even 3 different sources of advancement (though I'll probably just stick to experience points for the time being), but as you can tell from the text you read - I am not sure where to go with it. 

So, if you have any experience (hah!) with alternate experience methods, please tell me about it and about how it's worked out in your own game. I don't care if it's in a comment here, on discord, email, a postcard...whatever. I am curious as to how you've tackled this if you have. 

Because for me there is no right answer in this, there simply is an answer and the implications it brings with it.

Play-by-Post Gaming - some notes and advice

 Over the last month I have had run into several people online asking about advice on how to start a play-by-post game or mentioning that they are interested in doing one. And since I just started my own play-by-post game exploring the Caverns of Thracia, and I also have several years of experience in playing all manner of PbP games (from a racing game set in Unknown Armies, to multiple forum games of various systems, to years of both freeform roleplaying in Microsoft Messenger to semi-open world sandbox game on a forum with dozens of players, etc), I figured I'd write up a primer and some advice on how to do that. 

System and Theme

System selection definitely matters in PbP. You want something lightweight and not requiring multiple dice rolls in order to progress an action forward. Not that dice rolling is inherently a problem, especially with dice-roller bots and apps and such available on Discord, but it can grind the game down to a halt and the main thing about PbP games is speed - they are already slow enough as is, so you don’t want to slow them down too much.

Some of the PbP games I've run have used Call of Cthulhu (which tends to work well especially if the GM does all the rolling behind the scenes), HeroQuest:Glorantha, which is fairly light and out of the way, Unknown Armies, which also doesn’t require too much and can be handled all GM-side, and then also just custom made systems with minimal rules.

Freeform games with no rules generally just need a place for people to post and that's about it. Something more involved usually requires further setup (see the next point below). For OSR-style dungeon crawling games, that’s not too much of a problem - OSR games tend to prefer more light or at least unobtrusive systems anyway.

I personally would advise against particularly crunchy and granular systems, as those require either a lot more input from players (thus slowing the game down as you wait for everyone) or alternatively way more work for the GM running things to set up before they can simply get the action moving forward.

Platform and Logistics

In general how you organize a PbP games depends on where you’re running them. On a dedicated forum you can create different sub forums and threads for various locations or specific events. On Facebook you can have different threads and reply chains, though FB can be kind of annoying for looking stuff up later because…it’s Facebook. Discord can be good too, creating multiple channels for different purposes.

At the absolute, utter bare-minimum you need two threads/channels/topics/whatever. An in-character one and an out-of-character one. All banter, discussions, further questions and clarifications happen in the OOC channel. In the IC channel you only post the actual actions of your character(s) and the GM posts their stuff as well. This helps keep things from cluttering up and people can reference back previous events more easily.

For, say, a dungeon-crawling focused game what I’d do is have an OOC banter channel, an in-character channel and then maybe a place to store character records, allow players to keep track of their inventory and resources and so on. This is what I currently do with my own play-by-post game. 

In my own game I also have set up a separate google sheets document where I have character sheets on all the PCs in my game. Each player maintains their own character record somewhere too, but with me having them all arranged in the same way and in the same place makes it a lot easier for me to look stuff up as I write the game posts. 

Posting - Structure and Frequency

One of the fundamental differences between playing in PbP and playing in real time (be it in person or through a VTT or just on video or audio or whatever) is that it is asynchronous. While someone going on and on and on about the minute details of just how their character is feeling or what they’re doing in a given situation in real time play can be kind of annoying and time-wasting, it is actually encouraged in PbP, as you don’t have everyone else at the table waiting for you to finish. It means people can write out entire paragraphs of text per post, essentially only needing to stop when the GM needs to intercede with some information, or a dice roll or what have you.

Conversely, posts by the GM can reply to multiple player’s questions or actions at once, because again - you don’t need to respond to everything as it happens. For example

Player A wants to search a chest. Player B wants more information about the books they see on the bookshelf. Player C is standing guard at the door. Player D casts a spell to look back in time to figure out what happened in the room.

From here the GM can either make 5 separate posts responding to each player’s actions, or they can make one post of 5 parts that addresses everyone’s actions. So in our example the GM will tell Player A what they find, post a short list of book titles and maybe even descriptions of the contents to player B, either make Player C make a roll to see if they spot anyone (or just do the roll themselves and just tell player C what happened, this is the one I prefer) and tell player D what their divination shows.

While doing so at the table might require this to go in order, taking minutes upon minutes of time to go through all of it? In a PbP this can just take about as much space as I’ve written on this page and then everyone moves on.

This can lead to other connected differences from real time play. For example in a PbP game it is much easier to split the party into various groups and have the GM run multiple groups simultaneously. In a forum-based HeroQuest: Glorantha game that I played in years ago characters mostly pursued their own agendas and would only run into each other from time to time, almost immediately splitting into multiple smaller groups and going around the island the game was set on doing their own thing.   

In regards to player mapping in a dungeon exploration game, I just...wouldn't do it. Instead what I do is post clips of the map that I am using with a "fog of war" effect covering everything the party hasn't explored yet. 

Example of the party deciding to explore further north, and therefore getting more of the map revealed.
Since they haven't gone east yet, that part is still obscured.

As for posting frequency, that really is up to the GM and the players. PbP games are usually kind of relaxed affairs, with the typical minimal posting frequency being “Once per day”. But you can even go slower like having people have to post at least once per 2 days, though at that time the pace might be too slow depending on what the game is focused on.

For a dungeon-crawling exploration game once per day is usually good, and then if the players and/or the GM are around they can do more or maybe the GM can answer questions and offer clarifications in the OOC section. The once per day thing counts specifically for the in-character portion of the actual movement of the game. 

In OSR dungeon crawling games you already have a wonderful time measurement mechanic of the exploration turn, so I’d say that in that style of gaming I’d say one exploration turn per day (or more if nothing happens in them of course) as the minimum! I am still learning how to do procedural dungeon crawling through PbP myself, and while it works well so far, it might end up being too slow. 

Combat

So, running combat in PbP tends to be the single hardest part of it. Combats in RPGs usually require multiple short back-and-forth comments between players and the GM, and that is actively opposite the slow and long approach of PbP. There’s a few ways to get around this:

1. Combat just takes a bunch of messages. That’s how it is.
2. You make combat very fast and abstract, reducing the amount of work it takes.
3. There’s just no real combat. That might not work great for a dungeon-crawler game.
4. You simplify and abstract what you can. So for example players don’t get to say every single action in every single round in every single combat their character does. Instead each character can say what their usual deal is in combat - if you’re an archer you stay in the back and shoot at whoever makes the most sense, if you’re a healer you heal people, if you’re a magician you open with a certain spell then throw firebombs, whatever.

 
This allows the GM to then run a bunch of the combat by themselves, only really needing input for anything specific or non-typical that might be happening, or if the player wants to do something explicitly different than their default. This is the method I personally like the sound of the most (along with options 2 and 3). After all, I don’t need the fighter to tell me every single round that they’re attacking. We all know they’re attacking. I've not run any combat this way yet, only played in similar games, so again, take this with me just offering advice based on broad experience rather than specific exposure to this method.

Dice Rolling

Another thing that tends to grind the game to a halt is dice rolling. I personally am a firm believer that, in general, the GM should handle all dice rolls in a PbP game. That simply speeds things up, it doesn’t require a player to be present and log in just to roll a die, and it can move things faster.

On Discord this can simply be be done through a dice-rolling bot, which means all players can see the dice rolls and that there’s no shenanigans or fudging happening, but PbP games are inherently higher trust environments than in-person RPG gaming is (and those are unfortunately not as high trust as they should be) and so you just have to expect that the GM doesn’t want to simply dick you around for the sake of it.

This also ties into the comment above about system - Systems that do not require multiple rolls just to resolve one simple action usually do better in Play-by-Post games as it just generates less work for the GM.

Upsides of Play-by-Post

PbP games,I feel, actually tend to make for a lot more “roleplay heavy” environments than in person games. I put roleplay in quotations, because that’s a thing we’ve talked about in the past where people’s main idea of what roleplaying is tends to boil down only to “talking in-character to another player’s PC or an NPC” and that’s it. I personally think roleplaying is a lot more broad, but that’s another topic.

Either way though, PbP actually allows you to do this in spades! If you and another player want to have a long, in-character conversation as the party is exploring a room? GO FOR IT! Write it all out! 

It doesn’t affect anyone else’s actions, it doesn’t take up time or attention away from the GM and while it might fill up the thread or channel with a bit too much noise and make it harder to look up important info afterwards , you can easily solve that with sub-topics or maybe making a thread on Discord and keeping the convo there. 

Plus text allows one to more easily and less ham-fistedly, say, explore the inner feelings and world of a character. You can write about how your character feels or what goes through their mind, while doing so at the table, at least to me, always sounds kind of clunky.

It also allows the GM to in turn put a lot more time and effort into crafting a good description of a person or situation. To write out emotional reactions, use reference images, write paragraphs of descriptive text!

Downsides of Play-by-Post

The main issue that all PbP games ALWAYS run up against, and this is speaking from close to 2 decades of experience with PbP gaming is this - Inertia.

Inertia is what sooner or later grinds a PbP game down. Players lose interest due to the slow speed and leave or drift off, the GM loses interest or burns out. Inertia is what kills 90% of all PbP games.

There’s….not really much you can do about it either. It simply is a fact of life. After all the action that would take, say a 4 hour session can take weeks or months to unfold. That might be great if you simply want something going on in the background, but the downside is that things in the background also never keep your attention as much as something that’s going on in real time. And it is unreasonable (and frankly unhealthy) for a GM or players to try and keep a real-time pace going for a play by post game, as that leads to burnout very quickly and is what kills maybe another 9.9% of PbP games that inertia didn’t get to. (the last 0.1% is stuff like drama, arguments, scheduling issues etc).

Scheduling, btw, is if anything never really an issue with PbP. As long as a player can keep up with the minimum posting speed, then it’s all good. And having to just check a thing for 15-20 minutes a day is perfectly good.

 Plus you can always put in contingencies - for example the game is on pause on weekends. Or only on Sunday. Or on Monday or whatever. So no matter what happens, the game does not progress on those days, even if everyone is still online anyway.

Is this an exhaustive guide on how to setup a game - no of course not. But I already had these notes written out so hopefully they can help you as well! The fact is - the particulars of logistics and organizations depend on your specific game and the choices you make about it, and so giving general advice beyond the broad strokes I have provided here can be tricky. 

Talasumi

 The Talasum (Bulgarian: Таласъм) is a spirit in the folklore of my part of the world. In Bulgaria it is primarily described as an often invisible spirit of a person who was built (either physically, or just their shadow) into a house or bridge to keep the construction from collapsing. As the person dies their spirit turns into a talasum, and is either a protector or, more often, a malevolent presence that haunts the place they were built into. In more modern day parlance a talasum is usually described a furry monster of some kind, often mischievous but not necessarily evil. 

In my Greylands game, I don't really have goblins in the typical D&D sense of the word. So during my current house game set in that campaign, I have decided that the goblins the characters encounters are actually talasumi.

The Greylands Goblin -the Talasum

In some of the more remote parts of the Blessed Empire of Unity (say, like the Greylands) as well as neighboring territories like the small mountainous princedom of Mordavia, the ritual practice of building a living person into a construction is still fresh in the minds of the people living there.

While sages, scholars and other learned folk insist that the ritual hasn't been actually practiced in centuries, ever since the light of the Sun God has blessed those lands, old women in the villages tell a different story. Whenever a bridge keeps falling down, or a manor house needs an extra protective oomph to it, a young man or woman are chosen at random from the villages and made part of the building, burying them in the walls so that their spirit might keep the building safe.

Often times this is the end of it, but in areas with high levels of Chaos (again, like the Greylands) those buildings abandoned by their owners or inhabitants tend to get kind of..weird. 

Ruined manor houses or abandoned old castles with a person built into them tend to begin generating these small and hairy creatures the seem to simply appear out of the shadowy corners. These are the talasumi, Chaos-spawned echoes of the person trapped within the building's foundation. They are rather simple and basic construct - they mostly are concerned with eating, guarding their territory and sorting any household goods they might get their hairy hands on. 

Talasumi do not have a conception of name or age, and only the barest sense of individual self. If a talasum is taken out of the ruins that spawned it and away from others of its kind it can start to develop a sense of self, a vestigial trait of having a human soul as its parent. 

They are not innately hostile or friendly, their disposition often simply depending on the environment they are in and what mood strikes them at the time. 

Physical Traits

Talasumi are usually around 100 to 120 cm (so roughly between 3 and a half and 4 feet tall), and look like small men covered in thick black hair or fur, with wide faces and big, saucer-like eyes that seem to reflect light almost like a mirror. They usually do not wear clothes and do not appear to have any sexual organs. Often they are armed with anything from kitchen or farm tools to proper weapons, if they can get their mitts on them. 

There are also taller and much bulkier talasumi who seem to often have a rusty red hair and have large, pronounced noses. They seem to act as leaders to the smaller kind.

Stats

The smaller ones have stats as goblins in whatever system you are using. 

The big ones have the stats as hobgoblins. 

There are even bigger ones, potentially, but those are very rare. Give them stats as appropriate for something big and scary that goes bump in the night.

All Talasumi also have the ability to blend into the shadows of the building that birthed them (and only that one) and become invisible to anyone without magical sight. However doing so for long periods of time (anything over 10 minutes) or too often has the risk of the talasum simply melting back into the shadows that gave it birth and simply disappearing forever. As such they try and not use this ability if they can help it.

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 3

 

Summary 

We return to exploring the dungeon underneath the Boyar's manor, the party get a new recruit in the process, fight a ghoul and take his shit and then go and buy a house with the money. Also von Plarf the elf gets a bit too drunk when out carousing and ends up with a quest from God. We've all been there.

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 2 Druid 
• Pipam - Level 2 Illusionist
• von Plarf - Level 1 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 2 Dwarf

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Jan "the Hard Up" (Torchbearer); Ludwig (Porter); Adam (Man-at-Arms); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms); 3 War Hounds and "Rusty" (Hobgoblin)

Session Recap

After finding the stairs heading deeper in the dungeon, the party actually decided to backtrack a bit. They grabbed all the charred giant rat corpses they gathered after burning their nest and brought them over to the goblins in the other side of the dungeon. The goblins were quite pleased with both having fewer rats around and also having some more food.

While they were there, the party also approached a runty and kind of pathetic goblin that had rust-colored fur and a large nose, gave him a giant rat all to himself and asked if he was interested in joining, which he was. After being confused by the concept of having a name the party dubbed him "Rusty" and took him with them.

The two guards at the dungeon entrance showed the party what sections were part of goblin territory and which ones they were welcome to explore (the ones with barred doors, skulls painted on them and with 'bad things' in them apparently were fine, go figure).

Heading back down the stairs that they found in the caverns, the party ran into a group of aggitated and clearly stressed out giant rats and proceeded to kill them all, before going downstairs and finding yet another giant rats' nest, so they went about setting this one on fire too.

However this time the flames, smoke and squeaking of the dying rats attracted the attention of someone else. A pale, gaunt and disheveled figure lurched his way towards the two men at arms at the tail of the party and managed to bite Adam on the neck and paralyzing him, before being subdued by an arrow to the forehead from von Plarf.

Afraid for their hireling the party stripped the ghoul of his shockingly expensive looking things (a giant golden key, silver bracers, tons of money in ancient coins, a signet ring) before also throwing him on the burning pile of rats and nesting material.

Figuring there was no way to really take care of Adam while in the dungeon the party retreated back to Greytown to rest, recuperate and make sure their hireling wasn't going to turn into a ghoul himself and, ya know, kill everyone. Luckily the priests of the Sun Lord in town informed them that ghouls tend to happen due to spiritual taint and corruption rather than simply being bitten, so he was going to be fine. 

Selling off the loot the party now found themselves flush with cash, and not having a real place to stay in town decided to spend the money on buying a small cottage, with enough space to mostly house everyone (and the animals) and still have cash to spare. They also decided to induct Rusty the Hobgoblin into a full on party member, giving him a full share of the treasure!

That spare cash tempted von Plarf who went on a celebratory drinking bender throughout town. While many good times were surely had, she had also managed to find herself in a bit of a pickle and in her drunken stupor prayed to the Sun Lord to deliver her from this problem. The Sun Lord, being the benevolent (if rather absent at times) god that he is answered her prayers...and in return charged her with a divine Quest.

GM Observations

It is always surprising what details will stand out to players and what will draw their interest. Rusty is a hobgoblin from one of the rooms in Dyson's Delve, described as a bit of a runt that none of the other goblins or hobgoblins line. In my description of goblins as short and covered in black fur, and hobgoblins as tall and covered in red fur (and with big noses), he immediately stood out of the crowd and so drew attention to himself. The party treating him kindly and also a positive reaction roll meant that they ended up with him joining them.

Recruiting enemies from the dungeon is an element that has been a thing since OD&D (and really since before any published version of D&D), but it has happened so rarely in my games. It often feels like players are either happy to just kill whoever is in front of them, or alternatively try way way WAY too hard to make friends with a random monster or enemy they just ran into which also feels forced and a bit too easy. In this case though the party already had some rapport with the goblins and it felt like a natural conclusion that the runt of the litter would be happy to go with someone else who doesn't pick on him constantly.

The ghoul on level 2 of the dungeon is interesting and kind of fascinating to me. I know that Dyson stocked the Dyson's Delve dungeon using the B/X treasure stocking procedures, because he said so himself, but the ghoul feels really weird. There's not that much treasure around on the first two levels, and yet here is this single enemy with 6 HP (sure, a ghoul, but even a level 1 party can take him out in 1-2 good hits) and carrying thousands of gp worth of treasure on his person. I suppose it is quite possible to never really run into him if you don't explore that part of the dungeon, but it still is curious and makes me interested into what his deal is.

As for the shenanigans back in town - the Greylands currently uses the old Jeff Reints carousing mishaps table (which I plan on changing with my next iteration of my house rules for the campaign), and having von Plarf end up with a divine quest was definitely an interesting development. I need to decide on what that quest is now, because I feel it should be something that is both disruptive (in that it doesn't involve the party simply doing what they were going to do anyway) while also not being obnoxious to deal with (so disruptive in a broader sense).

The Greylands House Campaign - Session 2

 

  

Summary 

Another session of my house campaign, with the party making their way to their first dungeon and starting a potential friendship with some of the inhabitants. 

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 2 Druid 
• Pipam - Level 2 Illusionist
• von Plarf - Level 1 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 2 Dwarf

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Jan "the Hard Up" (Torchbearer); Ludwig (Porter); Adam (Man-at-Arms); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms) and 3 War Hounds 

Session Recap

After catching up with friends and family in the Hidden Village, Verasha decided to go see the high priestess of Svine, the God Swine and one of the animal gods that the pagans in the village worshiped. The high priestess informed her that the goddess had just given birth recently to 4 young piglets. Verasha had been very interested in getting another war pig besides Jaro, however the priestess told her the animals needed about a month to get to full size and power (they grow much faster, being the offspring of a sort-of-divine being).

Being out of money and out of anything else to do, the party made their way back through the forest and towards the ruins of the old fortified manor that the local boyar (or lord) had lived. On the way there they walked past a section of the new forest that had sprung up, and despite the cool autumn weather and the orange, red and brown panoply of the usual forest, this new forest was warm and verdant with bright spring greenery. Clearly a region of high Chaotic energy. 

Along the way to the manor the group ran into a group of war bears out on patrol. One of the bears recognized Pipam from back in town and the two groups had a nice conversation (helped by Verasha handing out seed cakes to all the bearlings) that yielded some more information. 

Medved, the lord of all Bears was apparently not around due to being in one of his other vacationing spots, but the bears heard he should be back at some point before winter. They also warned the party to be careful when exploring the new magical forest, as bands of big, wild and kind of buff elves were reported in the area attacking people. That was also the reason the war bears were out on patrol. 

Finally in the boyar's house (or what was left of it) the group descended into the family catacombs, and immediately ran into a pair of squat, furry and very large-eyed talasumi (or goblins). The guards were a bit surprised at having so many people show up, but once it was clear the party were not interested in fighting them, they suggested the group go talk to their boss instead, which they went and did.

Decent approximation of a talasum/Greylands goblin.
Just imagine this with a wider face and big, light-reflecting eyes.

The boss, a much larger goblin with rust-colored hair and a big nose, was initially unsure as to what the party's deal is, but agreed to let them explore the rest of the dungeon as long as they, quote, " stayed out of our shit.". He directed them as to where they can find the second entrance into the dungeon and told them to stay out of goblin territory. 

Thanking him the group went back outside and through some of the shrubs at the foot of the hill that the boyar's manor was, and found a natural cave entrance. In there they encountered and proceeded to murder both a trio of very big ferrets and also an entire nest of giant rats using liberal application of oil and fire. After skinning some of the ferrets for their furs and pocketing some coins they found in the rats nest the party found rough hewn steps heading deeper below the earth and headed down that way. 

GM Observations

Well with Gen Con finally over we got back to the Greylands and some actual dungeon exploration! 
Since this is a house game with only two players (and myself refereeing) I actually can do stuff like let the action stop midway through the dungeon, as there's no risk of a player not showing up or timing not making sense. After two years of running open table games with players rotating it feels very weird to do that, but I think it actually works out.

I still very much have downtime and associated actions with it, however it is now no longer enforced between every session, as it is with my open table games. The party still will not be able to gain any experience for the treasure and enemies they ran into, until they return back to town for at least a week of downtime and rest. 

Since I am running the same dungeons (with just minor changes to the overall area) as I did in my first Greylands game, this encounter is something the players actually sort of new about. And unlike the first party that went through it, they did not start a horrible and violent war with the goblins beneath the manor, instead a combination of high reaction rolls and just....not acting like an asshole now means they are on their way of having a potential ally in the dungeon! We'll see how that pans out in the long run, but it would be very interesting for me as a referee to see the same dungeon explored and approached in a different manner, and from there also leading to different changes during downtime. 

Another interesting thing is to see how difficult the dungeon actually is. The party is smaller than the original run (and both start at about level 2 under my Greylands house rules), and the first party actually never made it too deep into the dungeon before encountering serious resistance and losses. However they were also a lot more aggressive in their approach, so perhaps this party will go further?