Review - Prison of the Hated Pretender by Gus L

Hey time to talk about another module I really like, and call it a review! Since I mentioned it already in my previous one, I figured I’d write up my thoughts on Prison of the Hated Pretender, also by Gus L.

I have run the module both as a stand-alone and as a location in a campaign, though I’ve not played in it myself, so that’s the perspective I’m coming from.

Disclaimer: I do occasionally chat with Gus on various discords. Ain’t nobody paying me to write words on this blog, as if that wasn’t obvious. Also, spoilers for the module of course.

Cover by Gus L.

Overview

Prison of the Hated Pretender (Which I’ll shorten to Prison because that name is long) is a Pay What You Want introductory module for teaching both Players and Referees about the peculiarities to OSR/Classic play (Gus I am sure has opinions on which one it is).

It’s written by Gus L, I think illustrated by him too, and published by the Hydra Cooperative.

The dungeon itself is a small (10 room) and compact tower which houses a disgraced tyrant of undefined origin, along with the spirits that are set there to guard him. That tyrant is now the Pretender from the title, a miserable and pathetic undead wretch, regularly tormented by phantasms.

The dungeon has stats for Old-School Essentials (so, as usual, any version of B/X you like will do just fine) as well as having stats in the back of it for 5E, along with notes on how to adjust things to make it still work as intended.

What works for me

Quite a lot, actually!

Again, let’s start with the most obvious stuff, the look of the module. I really like the cover art, as well as the illustration of the tower within the module itself. The sketchy and rough artwork I think works well enough for the kind of dark, gloomy and grotty atmosphere that the Pretender is stuck in. The color palette is not as bold and striking as in Tomb Robbers. The layout I have some issues with which I’ll get to in the next section, however overall I think this is a good looking pdf!

After running Prison a few times I tend to default to it as my answer to the question “Hey what do I run as a teaching module for people new to the OSR?”. It helps that the module itself literally opens by stating that it is a pedagogical adventure. This was designed to be an introduction, and I think that Gus has done a good job at reaching that goal.

How it achieves that goal is by offering copious notes and commentary from the author on how to run specific elements (the “safe haven” of the Hamlet of Scabrous Yokels, the dungeon having various entrances, how to utilize factions etc.) along with keeping the scope of the adventure tight and small - only 10 rooms, not much in the way of empty winding hallways and generally at least something to do in each of those 10 rooms. The location is dense.

And I do consider the denseness a good thing in this case. While there have been plenty of blog posts old and new regarding the utility of empty rooms and empty, long hallways, I feel like those would hinder something which is meant to introduce people to the concepts of the dungeon exploration playstyle.

In both cases of me running this players did not actually ever “complete” the dungeon, always choosing to retreat after a certain point. This is a good thing. In general a dungeon shouldn’t easily be “completed” as if we were playing a video game and you want to check off another box before you move on. They are still there, and they might change and evolve (sometimes into non-hostile locations, sure) but should never simply be checked out and then left forever.

The fact that the phantasms keep spawning again and again until they are permanently destroyed helps keep the dungeon always a threat, although I would say even if they were destroyed it would be good to have someone else start making use of the tower, if the PC’s don’t want to.

Another thing I like is the loot on offer in the dungeon. There’s not too much of it, a reasonably sized OSR party of 1st level characters will likely not get enough to actually level up after going through this small dungeon, but it makes up for that in interesting magical items. And note I say interesting, not necessarily powerful. I love having weird magical items in games, as they tend to make any future situations that more complex both in terms of options and ways of approaching them. Plus, I just like it when a dungeon actually acknowledges that Magic-Users are always actively looking for more spells to add to their repertoires and actually offers you a spellbook to plunder! (Tomb Robbers does that too, and it is also good.)

Lastly, a note on its usability. As a standalone one-shot the adventure works about as well as any OSR dungeon, that is to say “pretty good, but one-shots don’t quite fit the way you should be playing these”. The Author’s Note attached to the Crypt room specifically covers this very well, acknowledging that 10 rooms is hardly a full classic “dungeon”, but Prison still offers a nice and condensed version of the kind of gameplay. If you’re going to use any OSR module to run as a one-shot, Prison I feel is particularly well suited for it because of its content-dense nature.

As a location in an existing campaign it does require some tweaking and concessions by the GM regarding their own setting - after all the Pretender and the people who trapped him are kind of big implications for the world, honestly bigger than Tomb Robbers has, because in that one it is a lot easier to simply chuck the crystal tomb somewhere in your world and not care about anything else about the Crystal Frontier.

As a location to start a campaign at, I think it works pretty good. As long as you are going for something suitably grim and grotty (Throw it in your Warhammer Fantasy-like campaign!) the tower will fit right in without too much issues, and the Armillary Sphere on top of the tower offers nearly infinite potential for the Referee to set up a follow up to the adventure!

Special note also for the writing - The stone throne with awful, unpleasant knobs on the seat and the pumpkin growing in a bathtub were really strong and evocative images for me when I read it and definitely stuck with players when playing. The Throne just actively makes you feel unpleasant as you imagine having to sit on that thing, and the pumpkin adds a bit of levity and absurdity to the whole situation.

What doesn’t work for me

Now then, onto the negatives. There are a few, most of them minor, but still worth acknowledging and addressing.

First off, the layout. The pdf is laid out in this rather odd landscape format which as someone who likes to print out documents when I run them I honestly did not appreciate. It makes it awkward to keep the dungeon in a standard binder without having to flip the binder over, and just makes it feel kind of off. I recall Gus has mentioned that he might eventually rejig it into a more standard layout so that Print-on-Demand versions can be bought from DTRPG, and I would gladly get one when and if that happens.

Furthermore, while I appreciate the denseness of the content, the denseness of the layout I am less thrilled about.

Here's an example of what I mean.

For me this starts bordering on a bit too much, especially when running this at the table. While the boxed advice notes are, in many ways, the main show of the book, I do feel like the way they are arranged ends up breaking up the actual body text in weird ways. Things feel slightly too much for me to easily reference during actual play, and I have had that happen in both cases when I ran the module (and this was after reading it beforehand both times). I do really feel like this stems from the previous point of layout. The odd landscape format makes text just flow in kind of an awkward way. I am not a layout artist, I don’t really have the proper vocabulary to express why it doesn’t work for me, but it just kind of doesn’t.

The layout does utilize bolding, underlining and other such methods to try and keep things in check, and it definitely helps, but I feel some rearrangement of the text would have done that better. Overall though I do not actually consider the layout to be that big of a deterrent to me recommending this, as it’s quite possible that I am simply the one having issues with parsing the text, which means that if someone else reads it and runs it they might be fine!

From a design perspective, I once again do have an issue with the factions in the dungeon. This is probably the one real place where the small size of it really hurts the dungeon crawling experience it is trying to convey. The only two real factions are the Pretender himself and the Phantasms that are his tormentors and guardians. In a similar way a with Tomb Robbers though, the Pretender is only even coherent on occasion, and the Phantasms are dumb, mute and aggressive as they are more or less single-purpose machines. Which makes it kind of difficult to get too involved with either faction if you are a player.

Whenever I’ve run it I simply always have the Pretender willing to talk initially, just as a way to give the players something to do besides wacking Phantasms as they move from room to room. Perhaps a ghostly commander, sacrificed by the prison-makers to oversee the phantasms might have been a good addition, providing the players with a direct counterpoint to the Pretender and being able to actually make the argument that, no, this guy deserves what is being done to him.

Conclusion

In conclusion - you really should pick up and read Prison of the Hated Pretender, even more so than Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier, I think. Its Referee advice I feel is quite valuable, and with way too many people not really being connected to the old blogs or able to really get this kind of advice or information easily, having it all be in this 21 page document helps immensely.

That advice is what makes this my go-to recommend, and I suspect it will stay that way until I find something that manages to do its job even better somehow!

Where to get it

On DriveThruRPG. You can also find Gus L’s stuff on his blog All Dead Generations.

BSSS - Session 8

 A bit late, but here's a session report on last week's Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel!

Summary

The party follows up on the last lead they have, have run-ins with ghouls and a rather demanding and haughty Sea Nymph. They also make friends with a water elemental.

Characters

• Esho - 4th Level Nercomancer Sorcerer 
• Shimsusa the Archer - 1st Level Fighter
• Maru the Witch - 3rd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Syphon Gandu - 2nd Level Diabolist Sorcerer
• Rajini - 2nd Level Sorceress 
• Athra - 4th Level Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko - 3rd Level Giant Lizard
• Tamri Ushar - 1st Level Fighter

Session Recap

The party, having run into a bit of a wall on their last expedition decided to follow up on another lead they had while they were down south - a treasure map they had found when exploring another dungeon previously was pointing to the ruins of a nearby small town. 

Packing up their camping gear they left the Bastion and travelled east, eventually running into an old (but still surprisingly sturdy) bridge that lead them into the town ruins. With the help of the actual treasure map they didn't really need to waste time searching through the ruins. The entrance was covered under some fallen stones, but with a bit of work they managed to get it cleared off head down and away from the constant rainstorms that had been going on for the past two days. 

Once inside the vanguard of the group ran into an oddly behaving puddle, which then turned out to be a small water elemental! A very very fortunate reaction table roll and one of the players using one of their extra language slots to declare they can speak the language of Water Elementals lead to them learning that the water elemental was part of a larger group of elementals which were somehow locked away behind one of the doors in the room. 

The door, upon examination, did have a magical field surrounding it, centered on a clearly magical lock pad that was put on it. The group promised the elemental they'll try and figure out how to get it back to it's people, then proceeded with exploring. After having to electrocute some very aggressive water leeches, the group heard calls for help behind a door rather suspiciously jammed shut with multiple metal spikes. After asking who the person inside was they learned that she is a daughter of the Sea Goddess.

Unfortunately all the yelling through the door attracted attention. With the aid of a helm of telepathy the party wasn't caught by surprise and managed to form up by the next door way as three gaunt, dog-headed figures rushed onto them. The first one taking a swing at the party's fighter and immediately paralyzing him and bringing him to the ground. Luckily for him the rest of the party managed to dispatch these monsters in very short notice, and after letting him recover they proceeded with a touch more caution.

Searching through some corpses and another ghoul attack later the party was 500 silver coins richer and somehow managed to not have a single one of them get killed by a ghoul! With that they returned to the trapped sea nymph and went inside to talk to her. She explained that she had been trapped for quite a while and wanted their help in being released from the fountain that housed her (a fountain, the party quickly noted, containing quite a lot of coins and a solid looking golden statue of the nymph's mother the Sea Queen). 

The party was all for that...until they learned the plan involved having to drown a human in her waters to release the spell, and also needing to obtain a blessed vessel of some kind so that the sea nymph can be carried safely (and doesn't just end up drowning them) to the sea. They said they didn't have anyone to sacrifice, nor any vessels appropriate for the task but promised they will be back as soon as they can!

The nymph was not sold on the whole thing though - she was an ancient and powerful being, essentially a minor divinity in her own right, and apparently others had been there before and had refused to help her, so she tried to use her magical charming ability on one of the sorcerers, but it didn't quite work. At this point one of the diabolists in the party cast Dominate on her...which was quite the mistake, as it now gave the sea nymph a direct mental link to his mind, charming him instantly and making him try and drown one of his hirelings. The rest of the party subdued him, told her to please stop doing that and that they'll help her later and all left the room, with the sorcerer now being VERY pissed off at her and trying to shout at her, but mostly being stopped by the others.

As the session was getting on in time, the party decided to simply try a few loose ends on that side of the dungeon before they headed back., They explored some of the ghoul lair and ran into a room filled with half-eaten and rotting corpses, the stench being so horrendous it made it impossible to even go inside. The party's necromancer got a glint in his eyes and gleefully reanimated a few of the less chewed-on corpses, making them search the room for them (finding some ghoul treasure) and then using them to explore some of the other rooms before, just in case the spell backfired, making them go back to the room and closing the door behind themselves. Well except for one of the zombies which managed to fall in a hidden hole in some water. 

The last thing to do was to open up a locked door that they had found a key for earlier, and lo and behold it worked! Behind the door they found a pair of well fed and actually pretty chill mountain lions, chained to the walls and clearly set as guards (the fact also confirmed by the party's fighter being able to use Beastspeech to talk to them). The group was not entirely sure what to do with these things, so they simply put them to sleep and then killed them, dragging their corpses back with them and presenting them to the company's cook for skinning and then cooking the meat.

Observations

So, this was quite the interesting session for me, as the dungeon is of my own design. I simply got a map off of Watabou (a truly wonderful resource) and then writing up the key for it. I do hope the party comes back to it again, as they really only have explored about a quarter or even a fifth of the actual dungeon! But we shall see where their whims take them.

The thing with the water elemental was quite fun, and one of the reasons why I generally try and use Reaction Rolls whenever I can, short of very very clearly aggressive or friendly encounters. It makes for such fun situations like this of talking to a blob of water with the intelligence of a smart cat, hah. 

In the days following the session the players have talked at length about the encounter with the Sea Nymph (who's name is the sound of crashing waves upon the rocks, which I am also proud of) and the player of the sorcerer that got mind controlled having a personal vendetta against her now, and declaring that his character will try and actively convince the others during Downtime to not free her but instead try and destroy her in some way, as he felt personally insulted that a being of such power would also act so dismissively towards people who are trying to help it. 

This kind of engagement with the game you can't really force or cajole out of players. This stuff simply comes from people actually caring about what is going on in the game and having a very genuine reaction (another example is the vendetta one of the players has against the one hireling which said she's quitting in the middle of the expedition, sessions back). It makes me happy to see it happen, and it makes me curious what the party will ultimatley decide to do with the Sea Nymph. 

Review - Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier by Gus L

I’m going to talk about a module I really like, so let’s call this a review! This is going to be about Tomb Robbers on the Crystal Frontier by Gus L. I have read the module, and before that I’ve played through parts of it (skipped some due to scheduling issues, but what can you do?).

Disclaimer: I do occasionally chat with Gus on various discords, which is also why I decided to write up some reviews of his stuff. Ain’t nobody paying me to write words on this blog, as if that wasn’t obvious. Also, ya know, spoilers for the module.

Cover also by Gus L.

Overview

Tomb Robbers consists of the main dungeon that it explores, a chapter on how to wrap things up after the characters are done with it, some appendices on the factions and magic items found in the module, a short write up of Scarlet Town (a possible base of operations for a game set in the Crystal Frontier) and then a whole other second smaller dungeon just to round things off!

The writing and art are by Gus himself, while editing was done by Ava Islam and Nick LS Whelan.

The main concept of the dungeon is that you are exploring one of the many crystal tombs that litter the Crystal Frontier, a borderlands between two powerful nations. The crystal tombs are chucked at the planet from outer space by Evil Space Elves, and you get to even meet some of them, sort of. There’s a lot of undead, a lot of dangerous crystal dust and generally a good amount of dungeon to explore.

The smaller dungeon, called Common Grave, is also a crystal tomb, just a much smaller one. I’ve only read through that one and haven’t played it, so I won’t really factor it into this review.

Both of these dungeons are statted out for OSE, so you can use whatever flavor of B/X you like to run it.

What works for me

First off, let’s get the bells and whistles out of the way - the visual presentation is very solid. The art direction and visuals are coherent (an upside of Gus doing all the art himself), the color palette is memorable, the way the book is laid out is generally easy to follow. The book looks good, in short.

As to the adventure itself, I quite like it too. The crystal tomb is, in many ways, the main antagonist and danger in the module. While there are some encounters like the pit of way-too-many zombies, or the Stylite and a few others, the main danger actually comes from simply navigating this very hostile environment. For me that really makes it a good exemplary dungeon. I remember plenty of sessions of exploring the tomb mostly just involving ways to navigate the tomb without dying from the crystals. I wouldn’t even say it’s traps in the usual D&D dungeon way, more that the material of the dungeon itself is just fundamentally bad for you, thus going into it at all is a risk.

I like the flow of the dungeon itself - there are a few loops, some of which are not obvious, there’s an alternate entrance/exit (good if you want to screw over the person who employed the PCs to delve into the tomb!) all the hallmarks of a well Jaquaysed dungeon.

I find the key pretty decent in most of the rooms.I do wish it was slightly shorter at times (and I suspect if I tried to run it I would need to make sure I reread rooms before hand just in case), but it is not too verbose and important elements are highlighted so that’s good.

Another thing I like is that the big puzzle door in one section of the dungeon can also be simply circumnavigated through using Knock or any equivalent magical way of unlocking a door. That to me is good design too - give players the option to have a go at the puzzle, or just let them ignore if they have the resources to do so and don’t feel the desire to spend the time.

I personally enjoy the setting the dungeon and the rest of the book presents you with some good Fantasy Cowboy Shit, and if you’re into that you’re into that.

If you're also here to do Cowboy Shit, then definitely give the Crystal Frontier a look!

It does mean that using the tomb for a different setting might require a few tweaks, but honestly I think it could work pretty well in your more standard D&D fare without needing to do major revisions to the actual dungeon itself. Gus has also posted numerous other things for his Crystal Frontier setting, so if you want to specifically play in that I think you can get a good few sessions out of it by just running what he’s already released.

Oh and it has Evil Space Elves, which are great. They are always great. Put them in your campaign. I don’t care if they’re Githyanki, I don’t care if they’re the Eld, I don’t care if they’re the Empyrians from this adventure. Just shove them in your campaign!

One last positive thing to note - I like that the book offers plenty of guidance on dungeon exploration, on how to run the dungeon itself and just generally good teaching tools. One of Gus’s other adventures, Prison of the Hated Pretender, is one of my go-to recommendations for people asking for teaching modules, so it’s good to see some of that in here too. One of my issues with Prison is how relatively small it is, whereas the crystal tomb offers a big enough space that exploration does indeed become a rewarding activity.

 

What doesn’t work for me

I have had a few gripes with the dungeon as well, though not nearly enough to consider them an issue. First and foremost I feel the factions in the tomb are a bit lacking. There’s a few - the reanimated former tomb robbers, the Stylite, the Sleeper, Mab, the employer who hires the PCs, and a few others.

However of those most if not all are either undead, Evil Space Elves…or Undead Evil Space Elves. Through my experience as a player our only interactions with these individuals was to agree to whatever it is they say they want out of us and then just run away as soon as possible and hope to never meet them again. All the Empyrian NPCs specifically are kind of inimical to your PC’s (and much of humanity’s) existence and as such we never found any good reason why we would ever want to help them.

As I mentioned in the previous section, I also found the key to be a bit verbose when reading it, and whether or not that’s a deal breaker is up to you. I personally prefer things a bit more stripped down, but this is just minor quibbles honestly. At least when a monster shows up the stat blocks are near the key for it, which I always enjoy having. I absolutely hate having to flip through a module just to find the stats for something, and I am glad this doesn’t make me do that.

 

Conclusion

I think…that’s about it really? The tl;dr of this whole thing is that I think Tomb Robbers of the Crystal Frontier is really damn good and you should go read it and better yet - run it or play in it.

And if not, at least take inspiration for it and write your own thing and put it up, because while fancy kickstarters and “zines” with loads of people working on them are all well and good, solid hobby projects like these are just nice to have around.

Where to get it

On DriveThruRPG. You can also find Gus L’s stuff on his blog All Dead Generations.

Using Errant Warbands in OD&D

 I've been wanting to have a way to streamline some of the combat in my OD&D campaign, namely reduce the number of rolls involved in the close quarters combat phase, where you have say 2 PCs and 3 mercenaries facing off against a group of 6 enemies and then just a whole bunch of dice rolls need to be made. 

My first thought was to try and adapt the concept of Warbands from Ava Islam's Errant. What you see below is where I got that to. I have run one playtest of this system during my game, which you can read a bit more about in this session report. 

The long and short of it is that I am not super happy with how this worked and it brought on a lot of questions regarding practicalities of it's use. 

However, just because something failed to meet it's goals, doesn't mean I shouldn't just share it anyway, so here we go. Maybe some of you can make better use of this. Keep in mind that this is written specifically for my own campaign's house rules, but I am sure you can easily just adapt elements to your own OD&D game without too many issues.

Warbands Rules

Mercs do not fight individually in combat, but instead augment the combat prowess of their leader (usually a PC).

Warbands come in Small, Medium and Large sizes, depending on the number of people in them, not counting the leader.

Small Warbands are from 1 to 5 people.

Medium Warbands are from 6 to 10 people.

Large Warbands are from 11 to 20 people.

Warbands have HP based on how many people are in it (again, not counting the leader)..A warband’s HP is based on the hit dice of its members, with every 1 HD member adding 2 HP, 2-3 HD adding 3 HP and 4+HD adding 4 HP to the warband total. For ease of keeping track of casualties, warbands are always composed of members with the same Hit Dice, maybe having 1 singular member who acts as leader (in which case they are not counted and instead have their own individual HP pool).

Damage is always dealt first to the Warband before it is dealt to the Leader. As a Warband loses HP it might fall from one category to another.

Attacks by individuals against a Warband are impaired, unless that individual has a means of hitting everyone in an area (a Fighter or Monster’s sweeping attack, a Mage’s AOE spell, etc). From there each step in size difference (individual, small warband, medium warband, large warband) incurs either an impairment (when a smaller group attacks a bigger one) or an enhancement (when a bigger group attacks a smaller one).

1 Level of Enhancement/Impairment gives +/-2 to attack rolls and +/-1 to damage rolls.

2 Levels of Enhancement/Impairment give +/-4 to attack rolls and +/-2 to damage rolls.

3 Levels of Enhancement/Impairment give +/-8 to attack rolls and +/-3 to damage rolls.

Here's how that looks, laid out in a table.

Additional Notes

Fighters that have a sweep attack add the bonuses/penalties to each attack roll they make. When using a sweep attack against a warband Fighters ignore the impairment from attacking a larger group, if they can hit all members of it.

A Sorcerer casting Maleficence on a Warband still does 2d6 hits to it!

For every 2 (or 3 or 4 depending on armor) HP that the warband loses, a mercenary is killed.

A warband’s AC is based on the AC of the Leader.

[I would have included some example combats here, but blogger is insisting on completely fucking up their formatting so I just gave up after the third try.]

BSSS - Session 7

The Bull of Heaven

Summary 

The PC's travel to a new town to investigate rumors of a bronze colossus, but things don't quite go as planned, mostly due to me reading the dungeon wrong.

Characters

• Athra - Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko
• Esho - Sorcerer
• Shimsusa the Archer - level 1 Fighter
• Maru the Witch - Sorcerer
• Rajini - Sorceress

Session Recap

After an entire session of essentially Downtime, the players were ready to head out, and their plan was to take a boat down along the Serpent of Smoke to another town and explore some adventure tips they got during previous sessions.

After a short and uneventful boat ride the group arrived in the late afternoon outside the titanic walls of Bastion of the Raging Bull, a heavily fortified and militaristic fortress-city, firmly dominated by the old imperial cult of the Bull of Heaven. They met with Captain Temen of the Bull Guards, who gave them the law of the land (visitors need a clay seal to be allowed into the city. Outsiders are allowed only within the Public Sector. Barbarians and sorcerers tainted by too much magic must reside in the Restricted Sector. No casting of spells within the city walls by outsiders.) and also confirmed the rumors of a massive bronze colossus somewhere in the jungles to the north of town. With introductions out of the way the party settled in for the evening, also finding a guide to help lead them through the jungle.

On the next morning they decided it was prudent to visit the temple of the Bull located in the outsider zone and make an offering, as well as talk to the priest there. The Bull Priest explained that the town tries to maintain the old traditions of the bygone Empire, and as such views people who practice sorcery outside of the directions of Imperial cults rather suspect. They also dislike people who dabble in summoning inhuman and otherworldly beings or deal with necromancy (two of the three sorcerers in the party start to sweat profusely and try very hard not to let out an awkward laugh). One of the players that is playing a sorcerer was disappointed that joining the cult of the Bull of Heaven would involve several years of training and practice before he is even taught any of their magic, so the party bid the priest farewell and left for the jungle.

While travelling through it, they did have two encounters - one with a group of river pirates, which their guide successfully managed to help them avoid, and one with four feathered monstrosities closer to the location of the colossus. The fight with the mutated beasts did result in one of the longer-serving mercenaries to die, but otherwise it was quite successful for the players. They set up camp and in the next morning explored the Colossus.

The colossus in question is a small-ish dungeon I got from Gus L’s blog, which I thought would fit quite well in my own campaign as the broken and magically contaminated old remnant of an Law-aligned army’s war machine. It took some futzing about with ladders, tying ropes and climbing up and down the thing’s legs for the party to safely disable the trapped entry hatch and then go inside, only to be met with another trapped hatch, this one also magically locked from the other side (more on that in the observations below). Stumped by this barrier to their progress, the group sent out their giant gecko companion(Gal-Naha) to explore some of the other possible entrances, but in both cases it returned simply repeating in the simplistic language of beasts “bad, bad, bad, scary, very scary, very scary!” and refused to elaborate.

Because of that, one of the sorcerers climbed up to check out the front of the colossus where they saw some windows. Through them he found a larger room, filled with rubble and destroyed machinery, and in the middle of it - a giant pile of tree trunks, bones, vines, feathers, other unmentionable things all centred on a giant stone altar covered in foul-smelling candles. The altar came alive, clearly some kind of magical construct which meant that this pathway to the insides of the war machine was also blocked off. The party’s necromancer did get a bit more information out of it, figuring out that this was some incredibly powerful necromantic construct, powered seemingly by hate, pain and the desire to kill and destroy.

With little in the way of progress the party decided to head back into town, with plans to figure out a way to get access to a spell that can open magically sealed locks.

Observations - What happens when you don't read the dungeon correctly?

So, two things I want to talk about regarding this session.

First off, worldbuilding - I came up with the details regarding this new town the day before the game itself, and as such did not even have a name for the town when the players visited it, only coming up with it yesterday (hence the post here). This was honestly fine. You really do not need to have everything figured out and planned out, you only need enough so that the players have a sense of the place and how to act within it. There are plenty of such places on the map of the Fertile Lands and I only have a vague idea for about a handful of those, and that is absolutely okay.

Secondly, dungeons. So…I realised, post-factum, that I had completely bungled up the layout of the dungeon. Part of it is due to the layout and write up of the dungeon itself, part of it is simply me not having had the chance to properly read through it several times and catch this weirdness before I started running it. After reading through it a few times I realised that the magically locked hatch is probably in a different level of the machine than where I thought, meaning the party probably had a way to go deeper if they desired. Oh well. I apologised to the players when I found this out, and we decided that in a future session they’ll be returning anyway, and we can just say the machine magically rearranged itself, or maybe they just now noticed an entrance they had missed.

Still, it is a very awkward feeling, like a pit in my stomach, when I realized that the session had ended as abruptly as it did due to me bungling the map, rather than it simply being a hard dungeon to navigate (though, to be fair, it is a rather deadly environment in its own right).

Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel - Bastion of the Roaring Bull

 My party has recently travelled down the Serpent of Smoke in search for some more adventure locations, and have set up shop in a city near the edge of the jungle - the Bastion of the Roaring Bull, or simply The Bastion for short.

Background

The Bastion was once simply the fortified core palace of a much larger city, but as the Empire broke apart and shattered, it ended up eventually becoming a small and very heavily fortified city. The city was used as a safe haven against the raging war with the various invaders, as well as the fights between the forces of Law and Chaos, with people being guided there by the priesthood of the Bull of Heaven, one of the old gods of the Empire. 

Now, a century later, the Bull Priests are firmly in control of the city, along with their devoted guards, and the divine protection of the Bull of Heaven. 

General Description

The Bastion of the Roaring Bull has architecture similar to most of the old Imperial cities, although a lot of the style seems almost archaic, with traditionalism and attempting to maintain the Old Ways of life in the empire are prized within the city walls.

Speaking of city walls, the outer walls of the Bastion are perhaps its most striking feature, being almost absurdly and unnecessarily tall slabs of stone and brick, built up over the preceding century as a reaction to the various armies of Order and Chaos that fought in its vicinity.

The great walls of the Bastion.

The city is composed of a series of walled segments - the largest one is the actual city itself, where only citizens are allowed to enter, or those outsiders given a special permit by the Bull Guards. Next to the city's ports is a single and very heavily fortified gate which leads into the Public Sector, the main place where outsiders, traders and visitors are allowed to stay. The Public Sector does maintain several temples (the largest being, of course, that of the Bull of Heaven), markets and loads of places to sleep, eat or drink. There are even some out of town merchants, mostly members of the Golden Fraternity, who own homes in there. 

To the side of the Public Sector is the Restricted Sector - the place where people who are obviously tainted by sorcery, barbarians and others are permitted to stay. The people of the Bastion dislike magic for its unpredictable and often corrupting way, and while they are okay allowing its practitioners within the city walls, they prefer to keep the more corrupted and mutated ones in a separate location, where they can be kept under watch in case they try to pull something. 

Quirks and Features

Dislike of Sorcery 

As stated above, the people of the Bastion tend to mistrust any magic that does not come from the Bull of Heaven and its sorcerer-priests, or has clear corrupting powers like demonology, necromancy or anything to deal with otherworldly and inhuman forces. Outsiders that perform magic within the boundaries of the city are escorted to the Restricted Sector and allowed to only reside there, or leave. After a second infraction, they are executed without any trial or chance of mercy. 

Most people from the city also tend to greet themselves by throwing up the bull horns with their hand, as a sign of protection against evil magic, and bull testicles are often hung above door frames as a protective charm.

The Sons of the Bull Warrior Society

A Bull Guard standing atop the city walls.

The old Empire had a long tradition of Warrior Societies - organizations somewhere between a social club and mercenary companies, composed of nobles, professional soldiers and others who all shared traditions, military practices or worshiped a specific imperial deity. 

The Sons of the Bull (most commonly referred to as Bull Guards)  are one of the few remaining warrior societies, and Bastion is their city. They are each personally devoted to the Bull of Heaven, and have undertaken the rituals and initiation rites of the society, granting them various powers and martial techniques kept secret from outsiders, as well as the right to wear a horned helmet as a symbol of their status. 

The Bull Guards are in charge of most things in Bastion, being its defenders, police force and guardians. Their leader is Commander Utu, an actual divine offspring of the Bull of Heaven himself - a towering mountain of a man with a bull's head. They are devoted to the Bull Priests and it is incredibly rare for a Bull Guard to disagree with the orders and judgement of one of the priests. 

Alignment

The city is staunchly against both the Lords of Order and Lords of Chaos. The Bull of Heaven is one of the few remaining City Gods and gods of the old empire that still answers the prayers of its worshipers, and as such the population (mostly, again, based on the guidance of the Bull Priests) looks upon both Law and Chaos with distrust - recognizing them as both ultimately inhuman and anti-human forces. 

Anyone associated with either Law or Chaos is generally only allowed within the Restricted Zone, if let into the city at all. The city is thus a strange contradiction - a traditionalist, very conservative and militaristic society, which none the less still ultimately cares about humanity over other concerns. 

Many thanks to Eldritch Fields for helping me come up with the name for this place, as well as some of the cultural quirks of its people.

BSSS - Session 6

Summary

A session of downtime activities including, but not limited to - summoning demons, negotiating with barbarians, gathering a huge posse and having a big ol' fight with a bunch of berserkers.

Characters

• Athra - Fighter
• Gal-Naha the Giant Gecko
• Esho - Sorcerer
• Shimsusa the Archer - level 1 Fighter
• Maru the Witch - Sorcerer
• Syphon Gandu - Sorcerer
• Rajini - Sorceress

Session Recap

This week’s session of Between the Serpents of Smoke & Steel consisted mostly of an extended downtime around the Undying City as the players had a lot they wanted to do. I won’t list out every single thing, but the primary activities they got to were.

They visited the manor gifted to them by Bel of the Lotus, the vampire they freed last session. The manor is in the nicer part of the Merchants’ Quarter and can either house one person as Luxury accommodations or 4 in Standard (which is what the group decided to use it for), also being safe due to having high walls and its own guards. So the party now has a proper base, and due to Bel being of non-insignificant means, the house doesn’t really have much in the way of expenses for the next 3 years.

Another thing they wanted to do was identify the three magical swords they retrieved (one of which was stuck through the heart of said vampire) from Gladio’s temple. They decided to simply ask the barbarian who originally gave them the tip for the dungeon (now dubbed Conan, because why the fuck not). He told them that he thinks those are three of the nine pieces of the Ninefold Sword, a holy relic of Gladio the Sword God. Conan offered to buy them off the party, but instead they decided to work out a deal where they’ll give them to him once he finds the other 6. He rounded up a bunch of other adventuring types and set off to the temple!

Meanwhile one of the other PCs, Syphon Gandu, who had been in town during all of this adventuring, had decided to try and find someone who can teach him some more Diabolism spells. Him and the other Diabolist in the party had had little luck finding any tutors in town, and generally have been met with disapproval and distrust from the town’s magic community. So as a last ditch effort he called on a demon, which identified itself as the Empty Thought. It agreed to lead him to a tutor, but in return demanded to command his body for a month. After some negotiations he agreed, managing to keep his own consciousness for about a week before blacking out after just an absolute shitton of drugs the demon took in one of the premiere brothels in town.

At the end of the month, Syphon awakened back in control of his own body, his spine now elongated, twisted and bent into an arch due to magical corruption from the demon casting way too many spells while in control. He also found himself in the hut of a person calling themselves Malah, who said they owed debt to the Empty Thought, and was going to teach Syphon magic as a way to pay off said debt. The demon had indeed kept his end of the bargain (mostly).

The party also heard various rumours and news, mostly relating to things they had encountered in previous sessions. The Temple of Ishtar which had become infested with slimes and Slime Priests had apparently gotten worse, now very much a Chaos-aligned stronghold on literally the opposite side of the rover from the city itself! The city had sent out a force to try and clear it out, but had been ambushed by Northern Barbarian berserkers and some horrible beast, and very few had ultimately managed to get back even with their lives, let alone achieving any success. To make things worse, some 50 odd people from the refugees they encountered two sessions ago, now living in the slums outside the city gates, had been seen going into the Temple District and so far have not emerged back. Rumours are starting to spread about what is going on in there.

With all of this and other minor tasks out of the way, the party decided to round up a bunch of mercenaries and left for the ruins, looking for trouble. Trouble did indeed find them, in the form of 55 Chaos berserkers, their leader and a chaos beast that looked somewhere between a bear, a porcupine and a giant maw on legs.

A big fight ensued, mostly as a way to test out a system of using warbands (taken from Errant) as a way of streamlining having to deal with too many mercs during combat. The party won the fight with a rousing success, mostly due to exceptionally good rolling on their part, and returned home.

Observations

Oh boy, this session! With my decision to cap the length of these weekly sessions, mostly for the sake of my own stamina and mind, it has been kind of hard for them to really do as much as before. The plan was to basically play out all the preparations and downtime activities they wanted, so we can skip those next time and simply get to travel and potentially even dungeon crawling! The big fight in the end, as I said ,was me testing out a work in progress hack of taking the system of handling mercenaries as a Warband from Ava Islam’s Errant, but making it work in OD&D.

The main conclusion is…the system still needs work. Porting from Errant to OD&D is a lot trickier than I initially thought, as Errant doesn’t use a To Hit roll, only Damage, unlike OD&D (a potential future blogpost if I ever get around to sorting my thoughts and observations on the relation between Chainmail, OD&D and Into the Odd) and that causes all kinds of weird cases to pop up in practice.

Further more, while the fight between the PCs and the barbarians would have been excruciating to do in my normal system (I do not want to have to roll 50-odd attack rolls per round, fuck that), it was not all THAT more streamlined as I wanted it either. My main reasoning for wanting to use warbands in the first place is to make combat take a fewer rolls and therefore IRL time as I can. I hate long combats (another future blogpost!) and so anything to make them move at a faster pace is a potential plus in my book.

The players did enjoy some aspects of it (the reduced book keeping when it came to hirelings!), but there are still major issues with how this integrates, a lot more than I had before this playtest. In no particular order, questions which I still need to clarify for myself and make a decision on are:


* How does one determine the warband’s HP? In Errant is based on Armor, which is how I ran it on the table, but Armor in Errant is more similar to Hit Points in OD&D than AC, so my initial thought was to use HD. That however means that the equipment of the actual mercenaries is more or less irrelevant, and that makes no sense to me.

* As warbands are simply an extension of the PC that leads them, and add a bonus to attacks, what happens when a Sorcerer has a squad of archers under their control and wants them to fire? The way I handled it, they can still do that, but they have to use the Sorcerer’s To Hit bonus, which is usually negotiable. However, this allows a Sorcerer to basically use bows, when they normally could not.

* Can a Sorcerer cast a spell while their warband is shooting at the enemy? After all the sorcerer themself is not doing anything, yet it feels kind of like cheating the combat phases to be able to both cast and shoot in a round.

* How do some spells that deal damage to everyone in an Area of Effect interact with warbands? A warband has its own abstracted HP total, so there was some questions how effective things were. One spell, Dust of the Sandman (from Wonder and Wickedness which is what I use for magic in my game) was actually more effective than normal, while another - Miasma, felt rather weakened. It’s a rather fuzzy bit of ruling that I do not like, as I want warbands to streamline combat, not create more opportunities for me to have to figure out just how the fuck things are supposed to work.

* How much should merc gear matter into their ability to fight as a warband? I don’t want this to be a mass combat system, this needs to be simply one step above the regular 1 to 1 fights, but as a way to handle slightly larger fights. The way it is right now it can integrate between the two scales, but not entirely to my liking.

So all in all this was actually a very fun and productive session, even if my playtest ended up leaving me with more doubts regarding the usefulness of warbands, rather than making me want to use them in the game.