New year, new campaign

I finished up my long-running D&D campaign in 2017, creating a gap of several months where I haven't been running a tabletop game. Gradually the urge built up and up, until finally I broke down. This is the start of an intermittent ongoing project log for the game I intend to run.

In this post, I'm going to lay out the basics of the plan:

1. Not my usual gaming group

My wife's going to be in this one, because she is the love of my life and we live in the same house and all that. But other than that, my goal is to include only players I haven't played with before. I've been playing with the same people all the time, and they're good people to play with, but I want to push myself a little bit and adapt more. Plus, you know, gaming with new people is fun in its own right.

2. A post-apocalyptic setting

I seem to have the urge to run something post-apocalyptic, on a level of whimsy somewhere between Mad Max and Gamma World. I guess the term for that is Fallout. I don't mean the Fallout setting specifically, I mean a game where there are serious emotional relationships and political and social questions but also where the specific details of the setting are absurd.

3. A simple system

I'm going to be using Sine Nomine's Other Dust. The core system is very simple and should be accessible for the players, but its membership in the broader family of D&D descendants makes it easy to adapt material from other games. I've got the Stars Without Number second edition Kickstarter as well, so that'll come in handy, I hope.

I'm going to be incorporating some elements of D&D 5th, including the bonds, ideals, flaws, and inspiration mechanics, which I feel will fit pretty neatly with the simplicity of the Other Dust system.

4. Miniatures for looks

I'm going to be trying to make use of my pretty extensive post-apocalyptic and science-fantasy miniatures collections, but the goal isn't to use miniatures as a basis for tactical combat. They'll help with things like ranges and proximity, but they're mainly all about looks and visualisation.

5. Regular updates

I want to write about the process of creating and running the game on this blog, partly to stop the blog from being just photos of miniatures and partly to keep myself thinking further in advance than I sometimes do. I think this will be good for the way I think about the game, although we'll see how it develops.

So that's the idea. Stand by for future updates relating to this game in the new year.

Self-indulgent retrospective!

A brief conversation at my Wednesday night D&D game inspired me to look up how long I've been running it. I checked the Facebook group we use for announcements and discovered that the group was created on Halloween in 2013. Since I know the group postdates the actual start of the game by at least a few weeks, I'm comfortable declaring that the game has now been going on for two years. Herewith, then, some nostalgia about it in the form of a recap and maybe, in the next post, some lessons-learned stuff.

One of the things you'll see if you're familiar with the OSR overall is that I swipe and repurpose a lot of things, including scenarios, monsters, placenames, etc., but without any real pattern. Also, I am not totally clear on the order of some of these scenarios.

Unnamed first scenario

In the dank depths of a dungeon in the coastal city of Kamor, four strangers awaken in a foul cell. Charming barbarian skald Eyvind, tough half-orc poacher Tag, confused priestess Frances and self-proclaimed artist of crime Felix must figure out how to get out of the jailhouse before the well-connected cult of Dagon claims them for human sacrifice. Tag proves exceptionally proficient with a brick in a sock.

Eyvind (haltingly): "excuse me, is this the embassy?"

After escaping from the dungeon, the four proceed to Frances' home village, where they discover a party of soldiers accompanying a cleric of Daoloth; the cleric is looking for a religious artefact which he believes Frances has stolen. It transpires that Frances is an exact match for Kastor Lieberrung Zenobia, Pirate Queen of the Thousand Isles! In a dramatic battle, our heroes and the villagers repel the cleric and his goons. The timely intervention of a horse is decisive. Horses in 3.5 are pretty tough!

Tomb of the Iron God!

(Based on the Swords and Wizardry module of the same name by Matt Finch, but much adapted to fit my game.)

A rumour of treasure in the ruins of a monastery attracts the team; they get chased around the place by a corrupt monk transformed into an iron statue, but are saved by the random treasure table that granted Felix a vial of concentrated rust monster digestive fluid.

The House of the Beast!

Together with new recruit Dexter, an itinerant potion salesman, the party are captured by a village of wereboars and thrown into an ancient ruin inhabited by psychic fungus, animated skeletons and a marauding party of little kobold bastards. Much eating of psychic fungus, grossout rot horror and brawling later, they emerge victorious, sabotaging the ancient customs of the beastfolk villages by impersonating a god using a big cloak, some low-level spells and an old skull they found. They also acquire their first hireling, unemployed weaver Albrecht, better known as Torchy.

Me: "Everyone in this party is a scoundrel except for Tag, who is a ruffian, and Frances, who is a weirdo."

The Fane of Chemosh!

An inept piece of bluffing by Felix lands the party in hot water with a local cult, who bully them into robbing a temple devoted to Chemosh the Destroyer, one of the Old Devils. The raid is successful, but Felix is killed by one of Chemosh's clerics! The cult round up the party with all the other riffraff and run them out of town; among the riffraff they encounter would-be fighting pit champion Ike Capstan, who joins up out of aimless necessity. This might also be where army deserter Ovgrod joins up as a hireling.

The Magonium Mine Murders!

A series of mysterious disappearances, a mob scheme to counterfeit important Imperial documents, the assassination of a mine official, a rigged prizefighting ring, and the schemes of a tribe of mole people all combine to make our heroes' lives a misery. Ike chases his dream of prizefighting glory while Dexter tries to help an old wizard-school buddy solve a murder. Tag kills a member of the sinister Veiled Society, thus earning their wrath for the whole party. Spoilers: the old wizard-school buddy did it. I enjoyed playing the mole men, who got to say things like "you lie! All surface-dwellers are the same!" Wannabe prizefighter and elf fangirl Karud joins up as a hireling.

Castle of the Hive Queen!

Staying off the main roads to avoid both the law and the mob, our heroes find themselves guests in a lonely castle under the sway of a mad wizard who wants them as specimens for his bizarre experiments. A big fight ends with the alien queen turned to stone; also, the party investigates a ruined Imperial fort and acquires a new follower in the shape of damaged Imperial war golem Mister Plow, who is convinced that Dexter is the Immortal Buffalo General.



The Bazaar of Ink / Galleries of the Nyctites!

Dexter asks the party to investigate a local bazaar where books and scrolls are on sale. While there, he falls in with a sinister bookseller who offers to teach him arcane secrets in exchange for rare volumes, while Tag agrees to escort a local bonehead on safari. The safari takes them into the mysterious Galleries of the Nyctites, where they discover strange magic and bizarre creatures and also Tag gets killed by a swarm of angry Nyctites after cutting down their leader. Death cleric Aznar Vartsson joins the party after being freed from his imprisonment in a magical painting.

Prison Colony #41 / Curse of the Volcano God!

Eager to end their feud with the Veiled Society, Eyvind agrees to a dangerous undercover mission: the party will infiltrate an Imperial prison colony on a remote island to find Jered Fowderhop, the Gentleman Thief and get him to reveal the location of the swag he is hiding from the Society. Dexter and Eyvind pretend to be new guards, while Aznar is hired as camp physician. Frances and Ike go to jail.

Investigating the mysterious goings-on at the prison colony reveals the workings of the Abyssal Brotherhood, an apocalyptic cult seeking to overthrow the Night-Black Cenacle and also reality. They have a volcano base. Fowderhop and escaped convict Knives join the party as followers, and former Brotherhood enforcer Zylphia Lockwood becomes a party member. Dexter's great-uncle dies, and he returns home for the reading of the will. Mister Plow is sad.

The Eye of Azathoth!

Both the Abyssal Brotherhood and the Veiled Society want the legendary Eye of Azathoth, a twin to the artefact Frances was in jail for having stolen. The party decide they don't want either of them to have it and set out to retrieve it themselves. Along the way Eyvind fights a werebear and Frances and Aznar bond over the idea of vampire-hunting. A deal with a hag leaves the party with a convincing duplicate of the Eye, which they fob off on Veiled Society representative Hugus Keech.

The Wreck of the Antelope!

Eyvind wants to buy a bigger pirate ship, but his pockets are a little short. Hugus Keech suggests a deal: salvage a cargo of fine liquor from the wreckage of a merchant vessel and that'll be enough to make up the difference. The search for the wreck leads them to a remote island inhabited by a tribe of frog people. In single combat with a particularly well-dressed frog-man, Eyvind becomes their king. Also, there are ancient ruins and mummies, and Aznar engages in sacrilege. Island shaman Kaia joins the party, together with her follower, mellow frog-guy Roark.

The Great Eye of Azathoth Heist, Part Two!

Returning to meet Keech, the party discovers that buyers from the Night-Black Cenacle are arriving to take the Eye from the Veiled Society. The experienced wizards of the Cenacle will instantly spot the fake and the party will be properly in the soup. They resolve to steal back the fake that they gave the society to cover up the fact that they already stole the original. All goes according to plan for the first minute or two, but then they realise that the Eye is rather more securely stored than they thought and also that the Brotherhood are trying to steal it at the same time!

Death Island of the Black Armada!

With their new pirate ship, the crew go looking for plunder. Kaia longs to be a bear, but she isn't completely clear on what one is. When they come to the rescue of some merchants, Eyvind invites them to set up shop on Frog Island. The merchants reply that they'll need an investment of 10,000 GP, approximately 10,000 more than the party have after buying the ship. Instead, they decide to raid the base of the privateers who robbed the merchants in the first place. The privateer fortress was once the headquarters of the now-vanished Iron Hawk Legion -- could there be some connection to the mysterious hawk amulet Kaia was found with? They fail to get all the money they need, but the privateer commander, impressed with their daring, offers them a huge reward to discover the legendary flagship of the Iron Hawk, which is said still to wander the seas under a terrible curse.

Down Among the Dead Men!

Still needing cash urgently, the crew decide to kill two birds with one stone by asking the prophetic Bell of Dagon where the Iron Hawk is and then subsequently robbing the temple of the offerings left by bell-consulters. This leads to a big eel-fight, but the crew escape with the gold and the undying animosity of the cult of Dagon, not that they didn't have that already.

Fate of the Iron Hawk!

The search for the Iron Hawk legion takes the crew into uncharted waters; arriving in the distant port of Mahran, they resolve to consult an enchantress who is said to know much of the Iron Hawk's history. However, a time-travel accident and Aznar's hatred of the undead mean that the island is suddenly under siege by the Legion itself! Having resolved that the Peerless Hawk General himself is probably an OK guy for a giant skeletal warrior, the crew concentrate on taking down curse-architect and lich Forenrond, then sending the General to the dimension where he can actually find the object of his quest and break the curse that keeps him undead. Aznar volunteers to go with him and the two depart. Jered Fowderhop gets a job offer from the enchantress (and possibly a more personal invitation from her majordomo Mustafa) and decides to remain behind, but he gives Eyvind the contact details for his nephew Reginald, a promising lad.

The Lockwood Legacy!

With Reginald Fowderhop, the Gentleman Assassin, added to the party, the crew head for scenic New Ejur, where they hope to find Zylphia's long-lost parents. Eyvind gets into a chess tournament in which all the pieces are on fire, while everyone else nourishes a growing hatred for civilisation and its inequalities. Mysterious assassins strike! Kaia turns into a giant bird and goes to the pub! Zylphia comes one step closer to her family! Reginald runs like mad from a dude with a detachable, throwable head!

Wow, that was long! Also needs more pictures.

Campaign lore: the Old Gods

Eight in number are the primal gods, left to govern the world in its youth. They are still worshipped by simple folk, but the upper classes of the Empire turned away from them long ago. Today, no follower of such a quaint and primitive religion would find favour at court.

The gods have many names and faces, and are worshipped across the human world in many guises. Most cultures recognise this fact -- even the angriest of the Free Nornrik rebels understand that their god Perkunas and the Imperial god Tiniaz are the same figure. There are also many lesser gods, said to be aspects or emanations of the Old Gods.

The Old Gods represent primal forces; as a result they are all Neutral on the moral scale, although their clerics may have any moral alignment.

Valla, goddess of life. Mother to all that lives, Valla does not play favourites among her young. Chaotic. She hates the undead and some constructs; life is for the living. Her shrines are often mobile, springing up wherever one of her clerics rests for a time. More permanent shrines tend to be in agricultural regions or deep in the forests, both because these places are sacred to the goddess and because the authorities make life difficult for her worshippers in cities.

Rhadamanthus, god of death. Rhadamanthus welcomes the dead into the underworld; his priesthood maintain funerary shrines and see that burial rites are carried out properly. He hates all who attempt to cheat death, from the alchemy-maddened immortals of the Imperial court to liches and vampires. He is brother to Valla, and the two priesthoods share a deep mutual respect. Lawful.

Fjorgyn, goddess of the earth. Lawful. Fjorgyn stands for all that is ancient and permanent. She is a greedy goddess, who will give the gifts of fruitful crops or glittering gems only when the proper offerings are made. Her temples are dark and ominous places, and even the cults of the Abyss have not rooted her priests -- who are said to command the earthquake and the rockslide -- from their mountain fastnesses. In Nornrik, Fjorgyn is said to have been the mother of the legendary heroes known as the Eight Cold Kings, and to have turned them into mountains when their reigns ended.

Tiniaz, god of the sky. Chaotic. Stormy and wrathful, Tiniaz sees all the evil that men do beneath him, and yet he hurls his thunderbolts not at the wicked but seemingly at random. In the Old Alliance, they say that he loves Fjorgyn and that storms are his rage at being separated from her. His temples are festooned with banners that snap and flutter in the wind, and his long-haired, rune-tattooed priests read mystical secrets in the dance of these totems. Those struck by lightning are said to be the god's chosen.

Nodens, lord of the deep. Chaotic. The god of the deep sea, Lord Nodens presides over a watery realm, welcoming into his drowned halls those who lived and died on the waves. In the Empire, the cult of Nodens has been almost entirely exterminated by the insurgent cults of the Abyssal sea-gods, and only a few shrines hang on where fishermen and sailors would rather dare the wrath of the Abyssal cults than of the cold deep. In Nornrik, his cult is strongest in the coastal south, but the recent conquest of this area by the Empire may soon change things.

Pele, goddess of fire. Chaotic. Pele is the warrior of the gods, who fought alongside Fjorgyn to bind the Old Devils behind walls of stone and flame. Her clerics see life as a forge, a trial by fire in which the goddess judges the strength of the faithful. Those who fail are consumed, but not damned; the goddess welcomes them to her fiery heart. Surprisingly, her temples are not at all warm -- only a single flame burns deep in the inner sanctum, except on certain festival days. Those with burn scars are beloved of Pele.

Shamash, god of the day. Lawful. Shamash is one of the least personal of the Old Gods, venerated as a god of time and truth. He is said to be the second-oldest of the eight deities, born only shortly after the creation. His clerics are serene and impartial; in remote communities they often serve as judges or magistrates.

Nephthys, goddess of the night. Lawful. The goddess of the night is the oldest of the Old Gods and has even less of an identifiable personality than Shamash. She provides arcane wisdom in the form of dreams, and her devotees spend half of their time in temples heavy with the smoke of hallucinogenic incense, waiting for their mistress to give them prophetic visions.

Other cultures acknowledge the existence of the Old Gods; in Elven theology they are believed to be emanations or aspects of the God, reduced and simplified so that the feeble minds of humans can grasp them. Those who worship the Gods of the Abyss recognise the existence of the Old Gods, but consider them weak and outdated -- and some even scheme to eliminate them all together and free up their space within the cosmology.

Campaign lore: legions of the Empire

So in this post and those that follow I am going to talk about developing the setting of my D&D campaign! This post is about the Empire's government.

Five are the legions of the Empire, and five there have always been ... although not always the same five.

The Immortal Buffalo General

The Crimson Buffalo Legion serves the whims of the Immortal Buffalo General. It is a potent military machine, most famous for having conquered southern Nornrik in the last war. Now, the Bufalo's fanatical devotees prepare for the coming of summer and the "big push" that will take them to the very foot of the Eight Cold Kings.

Junior officer of the
Dawn Scorpion Battalion

The Azure Scorpion Legionis of equal antiquity to the Crimson Buffalo, although lately it has no glorious victories to equal the Buffalo's. The Masked Scorpion General feels the waning of her influence at court as the Buffalo's power grows. Will some hapless neighbouring kingdom be the next casualty of the General's ambition?

The White Dragon Legion is the youngest of the Imperial legions. Led by the Invincible Dragon General, this force of sailors and marines patrols the Empire's coasts. The White Dragon jealously guards its role as the Empire's naval force. This role was previously held by the Iron Hawk Legion; when Grand Admiral Alzeth and his flagship disappeared on an expedition to the east.

Rumours of an actual dragon are unconfirmed.

The Night-Black Cenacle is not technically a legion in the military sense; instead, it is a cabal of the Empire's most powerful magic-users. The leaders of the Cenacle are warlocks who derive their powers from the Abyss. In addition to lending its magical skill to the Empire's campaigns, the Cenacle spends much of its time rooting out and destroying groups of unlicensed  magic-users.

I don't know where this image
is from; if it's you, let me know.
Plus, you're a baller.

The Bronze Jackal Legion was originally a band of mercenaries from the

Syndicate, and the Merciless Jackal General's power base remains primarily in that region. The Jackals were promoted to full legion status to fill the gap left after the destruction of Zothul and his Old Bone Legion by the combined forces of the Crimson Bufalo and the Night-Black Cenacle.

The Imperial generals are more like kings than military commanders, each of them with vast power and influence even in areas outside the war zones. They are among the most influential voices at court, competing with the Empresses Regent and the functionaries of the Permanent Establishment to direct the fate of the Empire. The Generals must balance the requirements of command with those of politics, often choosing to allow their subordinates to speak at court in their place while they command their legions in person. For instance, the Immortal Buffalo General usually speaks through his most trusted aide, Crimson Buffalo One, or through the Brides, his elite cadre of personal agents.