Setup of my new OSE campaign

I started a new Old School Essentials campaign, the campaign premise is something like: "what if Saruman had won and people now need to loot the dying forest of Lorien to survive?"

The Great Archwizard betrayed the elven alliance and took the throne of the Dark Lord. The elves are now gone and the Archwizard rule over the free world with his army of orcs and humans. His college of wizardry oversee cities, divine spellcasting is now forbidden. The eternal forest of the elves is slowly dying and is now in a state of eternal Autumn. Pushed by misery, desperate adventurers and renegades explore the forest in search of elven treasures and magical artefacts. 

I removed the elf class (to keep elven culture mysterious) and added some advanced classes like the druid and the ranger. I also included some classes that seem relevant to the premise like the half-elf and the half-orc. 

The Ruddy Dawn Forest

My goal is to run (and craft) a forest mega dungeon. the overland map is a point crawl but each points correspond to a geomorph tile when you zoom in. This way I get a series of interconnected dungeon crawl areas that contain a mix of empty and interactive "rooms" (clearings) and the feel of crawling through "corridors" (paths). 

This is the point crawl overland map I gave to the players, we are at the start of the campaign so the links are not revealed yet, my GM map naturally contain more information. The colors zones correspond to the "levels" of the dungeon, the deeper you venture into the forest the more dangerous are the encounters and the more wondrous are the treasures. 

The players can uncover new entry paths while exploring. To move between points the group must roll to see if they get lost (losing direction), if they do, I can augment the chance of the random encounter roll, make them arrive at a different point or advance time so that it get dark in the forest (I am tempted to let them choose the consequence). 

When the group arrive to a point we switch to dungeon crawling mode. To generate the forest map, I used caves geomorph and redrew the rock as forest, the tunnels and corridors as paths and the caves and rooms as clearings. 

The big difference compared to a dungeon is that there is less uses of torches but I established that the forest is very dense and that it get dark very early. Also the forest "walls" are porous, characters can move through the trees at half speed but this also mean that during random encounters, monsters can emerge through the walls. 

What else? 

I wrote four settlements for the adventurers to come from and to return to after their expeditions. The settlement they chose to rest in will influence the gear, services and retainers available. Also possibly different kinds of troubles. 

Grey Port (large port city)

• Afflicted by: unemployment and corruption 
• Occupied by the 4th Shadow Hand Legion 
• Wizard Tower (loyal to the ArchWizard) 
• House Silver-Mare (Lawful knights, secretly resist) 
• Black market, thief guilds 
• Great library (Engineer & Sage specialists) 
• Know for their candles that resist the sea breeze 
• Secretly worship the old gods in the sewers 

Wilder Town (trade post forest village)

• Afflicted by: famine and bandit raids 
• Trade with barbarian wildlings 
• Protected by House Willow-Spear (Neutral knights in exile) 
• Know for their wolf-dogs and archers 
• Specialists: Animals trainers 
• Worship the old gods in the forest 
• Druidic sect: the Mother

Gentle Anvil (small vale village)

• Afflicted by: poverty and taxation 
• Blacksmith and armorer specialists 
• Stone quarry 
• Dwarfs trading post 
• Know for their headstrong mules 
• Brave peasants and villagers 
• Proud torch makers, love bonfires 
• Secretly worship the old gods in their daily life 
• Druidic sect: the Maiden 

Castle Basilisk (swamp village protected by a fortress)

• Afflicted by sickness and scarcity 
• House Heron-claw (Chaotic knights, boldly defiant) 
• Harbor many renegades 
• Great healers and poisoners 
• Specialists: alchemists, spies and mercenaries 
• Boar hunters and great cooks 
• Openly worship the Old gods 
• Druidic sect: the Crone

I am tempted to enable the PCs to be able to spend their gold to try to help the settlements but I am not certain yet how to handle that. 

Spinetooth Oasis actual play

First session of running the Spinetooth Oasis with the Black Hack.

We used the Fabulous Tiny Guild mini-zines to create the characters, this worked very well as the tiny illustration inspire the players but at the same time they are simple enough that you can interpret them in different ways. They kind of work like canvas.

The group:

The setup was that the player characters were the henchmen of the Wizard and now that he is dead they have to work for themselves and become full fledged adventurers. But after a while I realized that since the Black Hack award levels for completing quests or something that I had to give them goals. So we modified the setup a bit. The players are now in charge executing the will of the Wizard and to bestow the items from it inheritance. So instead of delving to find loot, they delve to deliver loot!

The first item to bestow was a frog bottle of transmutation to the Cactus Mother.

• They met some owl faced cultists and learned about their vendetta against the city state of Zar Naf.
• They walked through the purple grass and avoided a group of lost soldiers from Zar Naf. 
• They picked up some narcotic cactus flowers. 
• They encountered the succulent owl bear and pointed him toward the soldiers.
• A halfling kid shoot someone in the head with a sling shot and vanished in the cactus bushes. 
• They encountered a group of sisters of filth who stole cactus flower from the Reboo's gang. 

Session 02
There was no fights, but there was a lot of fun interactions.

• The group evaded goons from the Reebo's while hiding in the cactus grooves. 
• They met with the Cactus Mother who revealed that the old Wizard was once her apprentice. 
• They gave her share of the wizard's inheritance: a bottle of transmutation liquor. 
• She made one of the PC her champion and transformed him into a giant jade spider. She gave them the quest of awakening the statue of the Succulent Goddess.
• The group ventured in the caves and traded with the succulent guardian. 
• Someone tasted the nutritive poop and said it tasted like caramel pudding. :P 
• The group was ambushed by succulent spiders but the jade spider PC was able to recruit them. 
• They awakened the Succulent Goddess and convinced the owl cultist that her people must help the goddess to protect the oasis instead of desiring vengeance over the city people. 
• The goddess transmuted back the PC. 
• Everyone leveled up to level 2. 

The next item on the list is a set of garden gnomes that must be delivered to Reebo Carubo!

I think that the cactus caves could have used a few more rooms to explore, but it would have been probably a bit different if the succulent creatures were not friendly to them.

I like the Black Hack but I think that I don't like awarding levels for quests because it short-circuit the exploration as the group only focus on accomplishing their goal. I prefer exploration oriented award but I am also curious about the option of awarding a level each session presented in the Black Hack book. I want to see what happen when the players don't have to worry about doing specific things to level up.

Since we rarely have the occasion to play, I think that I will use this option and award a level every session. This way if we play up to level 09, this will give us a 9 sessions campaign. Considering that we play maybe once a month, this give us reasonable campaign length and pacing.

To avoid the feeling that the whole campaign is a accelerated 9 days leveling up, I will run it as a episodic campaign, a month passing by between each session. This will also let me re-setup the seting a bit to underline the consequence of the player character's actions.

Mutant Year Zero - Actual Play 03

Session 08
Ark projects, zone exploration and a deadly trap! 

Our Ark look like this, except that our ship have split in the middle section. 

Characters development 

• Brando (played by Sylvain M) is still learning how to be a good boss. Ordering people around is harder than making a stand for the people. His big dream is that one day the Ark will be strong enough to dominate the zone. 
• Clarissa (played by Annick P) have fully regained control over her instincts. Her big dream is to have a secret safe place. 
• Fillix (played by me) is slowly learning how to sense emotions and how to shoot (because she felt helpless during the encounter with the robots). Her big dream is still to uncover the truth about the elder and Eden. She pass a lot of her time with her chronicler friend Juna to try to learn how to read. 
• Allia (played by Dominic C) is more and more interested by our car. She still dream about making her master proud of her: Brando. 

I finally checked the equipment list in the book and I have spend around 14 bullets of gear. Basic stuff that will help us a bit: scrap binoculars, a shovel, a knife, a pair of boots, a lantern, etc. I wanted to get a scrap riffle but our Ark have no armory. So instead I had buy a jury-rigged rifle from a NPC gearhead. The big difference is that jury-rigged stuff break once you use them (except if you spend stunts on them).

I was expecting the characters to mutate like crazy during the campaign but in 8 sessions we only had one new mutation (or feral power). Since Otiak mutated and died during our second session, none of our characters gained new powers (for this to happen you have to roll 1 twice on a d6 when you use your power).

Ark development 

We finished all of our projects! But we are still a bunch of uncultured barbarians.

Brando trained our militia, Clarissa and Allia worked on our barricades and Fillix worked on the temple.

Since I was working on the temple I asked the other to check the video camera they had found in the mushroom contaminated factory. I used the batteries from the underground base and we managed to watch the footage contained in the artifact. It was a sequence showing the Elder walking out of Eden with other humans and hundreds of young children. It was us! The GM showed us a picture and we recognized some of the NPCs (nice touch!). Fillix, Juna and Allia were really moved!

The neat thing about the mutants is that they are all childhood friends, they are like a entire high school that was left to themselves. Lord of the Flies style...

Naturally this triggered my manipulative instincts, I used some dirt I had on Boss Nafta to get a new battery and to jury-rig the video camera to show the images to everyone working on the temple. Doing so I put the Boss Zidane, the rabbit seer, in charge of the ceremony and I used the occasion to humiliate the Chronicler's boss, Astrina by trusting the care of the sacred camera to Zidane instead of her. With the help of Allia I put under her nose that hiding in the Ark is a error, that we have to venture into the zone to learn the truth. I nearly felt bad for her (damn my new sense emotions skill!)

With the barricades and the militia we rolled super high to rise our warfare score but sadly, again we rolled low on our cultural development points. Having a low culture score is really starting to limit our Ark. But the Ark is getting a character of it own and this part of the game is starting to get super involving. Finishing those projects felt like a achievement.

That said I note that developing the Ark is really random, especially with the projects that award 2d6 points of development. Earning 2 points or 12 points is a big difference. So even if you build the same projects in different playthroughs, each campaign must feel different. Like for our Ark, the only cultural project we have left now is to build a museum, if we roll under 3 on our d6 we will have no choice but to explore the zone to find cultural artifacts to try to raise our culture score above 10. I like this since it build a narrative of it own if you take the time to "read the bones" of the dice results.

A big Threat! 

After working hard on our projects we went to our crappy tavern to drink some disgusting booze.

There, Thomaz the mind-terror mutant, attacked Juna, she tried to fight him of with her telepathy but he overwhelm her with his mind-terror power while telling her that they were alike with their mind powers and that should always have been together. Clarissa jumped in and tried to smash his head in a table but he unleashed his power on her making her believe she was drowning in a bag (naturally). This gave the opportunity to Fillix to close in and to use her parasitic power to steal Thomaz's mind terror power and to give him a taste of his own medicine. I went for a really nasty mind-terror and I inflicted him the hallucination that the Elder was beating him with a crowbar while telling him that he was totally worthless. That was really vicious, since the Elder is our only father  figure. Fillix felt disgusted with herself after this (well for a brief moment at least, I mean she can be quite nasty sometime).

Before we could leave the scene, the GM drew a Threat card and Geeko the boss of the NPCs stalkers stumbled in the tavern, bleeding badly. His group was ambushed by the Hell Drivers! Dog-Face (NPC enforcer), Ratchet (NPC gearhead) and Charlene (NPC badger gearhead) were taken prisoners! (Ratchet is the NPC that Allia want to protect and Charlene is the NPC that Clarissa want to protect). Shit! I mean the Hell Drivers... This is bad.

Clarissa was ready to leave alone to rescue her badger friend/lover. But we decided to take the car and to go together. Anyway we need to recon those Hell Drivers, they are too big a menace to ignore.
So we made some preparations and the team left for the zone (Brando brought his side-kick buddy: Spoutnik, the beagle warrior).

Into the zone

With the car full of booze, we quickly traveled through the explored sectors up to the ruins of the temple of the Law of Lob. From there we went north. We passed near some crazy rams, a rot pit and we got stuck in the mud.

The travel was uneventful we discovered no artifact to tempt us to mess with some of the threats we encountered. I wanted to check the Zone Ghouls Den, but the group wanted to avoid any additional trouble.

Exploring the zone and mapping is still fun, but sometime I wish that the zone was a bit weirder, but I guess this is just a question of random rolls. We still have a lot of sectors to explore. :)

When you travel through already explored sectors there is no random encounters or new threats. At first I was a little bit let down by this, but after 8 sessions I think this is a good design choice because this put the focus on the unexplored sectors. There is so much things to do in the game, you don't want to get bog down in already explored sectors.

A deadly trap! 

So the Hell Drivers! We sneaked up to their lair, a multi-story parking lot. There was a lot of people with brightly colored hairs (I joked that we should steal this cultural technology) and many cars, trucks and buggy!

Clarissa scouted the place and learned that our friends were held prisoner in the basement of the parking. We decided that Clarissa should go alone with Allia to try to sneak in to free the prisoners. Allia is our best fighter (beside Brando) and she can fly away if things get too ugly while Clarissa can always find a place to hide to sneak out of trouble. The rest of the group will remain outside as backup.

Clarissa and Allia passed by some guards down in the basement until they found a van guarded by a hell driver. They tried to surprise-kill the guard, but with a twist a bad luck Allia rolled badly on a 10 dice attack roll, she pushed her roll only to tax herself with 3 points of damage! They wounded the Hell Driver but he banged on the Van and a gigantic women with a huge meat cleaver opened the door of the van. Inside the van: the giant woman, her assistant and our friends chained to the wall ready to be transformed into meat rations!

Scared by her bad roll and her damage points Allia really did not confident enough to take on the Boss of the Hell Riders. We panicked at the table: "Shit! Pull out! This is a TPK trap!"

Clarissa and Allia hesitated a moment but there was simply no way for them to win this fight against 3 NPC including a boss. And the two other guards from above would rush in once they ear the fight.

So they diced to abandon their friends to their fate and they pulled back. They managed to get out of the camp that quickly went into full alert mode!

We regrouped, jumped in the car and we hit the gas pedal to the ground. A scout buggy was on our trail menacing to find us and to send the Hell Riders armada on our trail! But I used my new scrap jury-rigged rifle and I managed to shoot it damn search light! The rifle broke, but still, best use of my money ever!

Back home

Oh shit we were scared, frustrated and angry! We wasted our resources for nothing and we barely escaped alive! Now what to do?? There was talk of war at the table.

For my part I was more thinking about trying to make a alliance with the Lighthouse Ark of Amazones or to try to cut a deal with the zone ghouls to try to buy back our friends if they are not already eaten.

One positive note: we rolled no casualties for the Ark.

We ended the session and we distributed the XP.

Allia spent her XP to change her role, she went to the den of Ratched to take her tools, now she was going to work on that car to become a gearhead!

Clarissa will also have to find a new NPC buddy and Annick was talking about changing her big dream.

Brando is grinding his axe and thinking about how to use our militia...

Fillix is still learning how to read with Juna. I am thinking of making peace with Astrina to become a chronicler. Or maybe I could make a deal with Zidane to become a seer... Both options are tempting.

Oh and winter is coming! It started to snow...

...

Fillix learning her alphabet with Juna her semi-translucent skinned telepathic friend:

My next campaign.

The GM of my second group had to leave because of family duty. I enjoyed being a player again and it was super interesting to try Dungeon Crawl Classic and to to venture into Stonehell for three sessions. Being a player I noticed some stuff that I will discuss about in a future post.

My second group want to continue dungeon delving so I will take the role of the GM and I will referee a second campaign.

This time I want to run a campaign inspired from the manuscript of Storming the Wizard Tower. I want to focus the campaign on a village as a "natural group" and the dark influence of it near dungeon. I will use the Storming the Wizard Tower setup to start my prep. I also want to make random tables to determine who from your relations in the community are potential adventurer replacement. I will also try some house rules like the stress rules. I will award Xp for Gold & Goals.

So overall I have a good idea of how I want to organize things, but I posted a email to the group to let the players choose the setting.

My suggestions:

1. A village of vikings near the Barrowmaze or Death Frost Doom.
2. Peasants living near a classic vampire castle like Ravenloft. 
3. Halfling cheese maker village near natural caves used to keep their cheese. (Wheel of Evil)
4. Dwarf settlers who have to reclaim a ancient dwarven fortress. 
5. A tribe of savannah hunters living near a lost city. 
6. A tribe of eskuit living near the ruins of a frozen city in the Weird New World. 
7. The crew of a ship exploring the Weird New World in search of a legendary lost city.

The idea is to combine a local community and a adventure location.  

My city encounters

I check for encounters for each new streets pattern that the group map.
When the group travel between two known location I check once by neighborhood.

Chance of encounters:

• Day: 1 on d6
• Night: 2 on d6
• Festival: +1 chance of encounter

If there is a encounter, I roll to on my encounter type table:

• 1-3 Street event (happen in the largest street)  
• 4-5 Trouble (happen in the smallest street) 
• 6 Weird / Supernatural (GM choose the street) 

Night: +1 on roll

Street events involve a crowd of people that block a street (d20):

1. Religious procession of Vorn / Tittivilla
2. Marriage / Funeral
3. Public judgement / execution
4. Public contestation / debate / scandal / humiliation 
5. Cultist / Priest preaching
6. Nobles celebrating / parading exotic slow pets
7. Street Crier / Artist attracting a large crowd 
8. Ambassador / city officials / military procession
9. Caravan stuck / Large cattle delivery  
10. Street auction / market 
11. Constructions 
12. Crowd watching a accident or fight on a bridge
13. Fire!
14. Stone or ice sheet fall
15. Street closed for Investigation / Plague
16. -  20.  Special / unique event (a other table) 

The Neighborhood wealth determine the type of trouble (d6):

• Wealthy: 1-4 Law or Nobles, 5-6 Crime or vermin 
• Middle: 1-3 Law or Nobles, 4-6 Crime or vermin
• Poor: 1-2 Law or Nobles, 3-6 Crime or vermin

Trouble involve a pool of HD equal to the group size + 1d6.

For the weird/supernatural stuff I roll on a table of unique encounters.

The encounter distance is the street length in map unit in d6 (x 10').
So a 3 square length street give a 3d6 x 10' encounter distance.

The group can always choose to take a alternate route to try to avoid a encounter.
This way encounters often push the group into unexplored parts of the city.

Oh also when there is a fight I check to see if the city guard intervene after each 6 rounds.
(with a cumulative +1 chance by test)

Neighborhood wealth:

• Rich: 1 on d6
• Middle: 1 on d8  
• Poor: 1 on d10

• Large street: +2 chance
• Night or alleyway: +1 die step

The night at the inn

To keep with the concept that Vornheim is like a mega-dungeon, when the group pass the night in a inn I check for encounters.

The chance of having a encounter depend of the quality of the inn:

• Luxury: 3 on 6 (+1 to reaction bonus) 
• Secure: 1 on 6
• Standard: 2 on 6
• Poor: 2 on 6 (-1 to reaction bonus)
• Piss poor: 3 on 6 (-2 to reaction bonus)

(Carousing add +1 to the chance of having a encounter) 

Next I roll a d6 to determine the nature of the encounter:

• 1 Witness something weird or supernatural.
• 2-3 Get in trouble.
• 4-5 Hear a interesting rumor or superstition.
• 6 Meet someone that could be a interesting contact or ally.

And I improvise from there. 

I also roll on the same table when the group pass through a large crowd of people in the city.

Giwoitis lizard folk women

The giwoitis are lizard folk women who take care of the abandoned goats and cattle from the cursed farmlands. They enchant them and offer their milk to lawful and neutral adventurers who can find their enchanted barn.

This is how I like to use alignments in my sandbox games: I assign alignment and different alignment reaction to my special unique encounter. So the interesting parts of the sandbox react differently to lawful, neutral or chaotic characters. (oh yeah, the milk have strange effects on chaotic characters.)

Witch grave ossuary

One of the witch graves ossuary from my Labyrinth Lord campaign.

...

Alternative larger version:

Playing Stars Without Number

I am playing in my friend Dominic's campaign of Stars Without Number.

I enjoy the group, the game, the system and the campaign a lot. :)

The game's OSR system is neat, I like having only 3 classes, the simple skill system and all the other tweaks.

(check out the Grognardia review)

Creating your character is fun: you choose one of the 3 classes (expert, warrior or psychic), a background and a class training that both determine your starting skills.

Simple, quick and colorful.

My character is Danielle Ros, a biotech crew space marine.

So she is a spacer, she worked for a biotech corporation in a space emergency respond squad.

I established that the biotech corporation went bankrupt after a bio-contamination disaster or scandal. (Think Umbrella corporation). Her squad was disbanded and now she is a adventurer.

I was not super lucky with my attribute rolls, I only rolled a bonus in wisdom, and I got one in dexterity by placing a 14 in one of my class main attributes. But this is fine with me, I like playing characters who only have a few small edges that define them.

We started playing on Priam, a major world. Since we had no ship and we had to write a goal on our character sheet I ended up playing Danielle as a disgruntled marine hating being stuck on the ground and being ready to do anything to go back in space.

As I played her I discovered during our first session that she cared about people, I guess this come from her emergency aid background. During the second session I discovered she missed being in space so much that she now take pills of a drug that provide a zero gravity feeling. During our third session I discovered that she have a weak spot for the mysterious assassin Eliot and Indrani, a resourceful NPC. This is what she is for now.

Here, my friend D•Miranda made a drawing of my character taking her dose of Zero-G drug:

(check out his blog: Jaguar Combat :)

The group is composed of 6 players (2 female & 4 male players playing 2 female & 4 male characters):

- Drake the born noble commando.

- Danielle the biotech crew space marine.

- Eliot the security crew assassin.

- James Flanagan, adventurer and criminal

- Griff the technician pilot

- Constance the rogue psychic priestess

In 3 sessions we had two characters reduced to zero hit point, but we had no casualty thanks to the 6 rounds we have to stabilize them. With the XP we gained at the end of the third session all the characters will able to reach level two at the start of our next session.

This is the first time I have a great time playing in such a large group. The session are very packed, we often hesitate at the start as people figure out what they want to do, but once we choose the action move quickly and a lot of stuff happen. The referee never use "no" on failed skill tests, he always use "no but..." I like it, this work well for a 6 players group as it keep things moving. We play one session missions, which is great since we feel that we accomplish something each time we play. For now we miss a little bit of time at the end of the session to wrap things up. I wish we had the time to play a few follow up scene with NPC and other PC. But this is ok.

During session 2 we were able to steal a transport ship that a faction planned to sabotage. Now we have to find a way to repair it jump drive. Earning the ship was really fun. I admit that at first I was a little bit worried that it could take us a lot of time before we could able to buy our own ship to explore the space sand-box.

Doing missions on the starting planet is fun, but what really interest us all is exploring the sandbox and having galactic adventures. I din't read the whole SWN PDF, but I wonder if there is advice or guide lines about how to get the group in space to let them explore the starmap sandbox on their own. That said, I think it was well and fairly handled in our campaign.

Next session we are probably going to explore a derelict spaceship that crashed in the rock desert in hope of salvaging tech to repair our own ship.

Taking a break.

Tonight session din't go very well.

I am closing down my LotFP campaign and taking a break from being the referee.

(but I will be a player in a Stars Without Number campaign)

I will also take a break from this blog to focus more on my personal drawings

But I will still visit your blogs. It was very interesting to read you all.

Traps & Challenges

I want to expand a little on my comment about traps & challenges.

It seem important to give the players information or ways to distinct between traps & challenges.

• Trap = danger with no reward at the end.
• Challenge = danger with a reward at the end.

(reward = treasure, clues, new area to explore, etc)

Also:

• Trap = something to identify and to avoid.
• Challenge = choosing to take risks to get a reward or to unlock content.

So, in a sense:

• Avoiding to interact with a trap = good move or tactic.
• Avoiding to interact with a challenge = avoiding to play the game.

(well naturally challenges are also about choice, so choosing not to face a challenge for a good reason is playing the game. This is different from avoiding interacting with something just because you are too prudent or careful and don't want to face risk & challenge.)

When players can't distinct traps from challenges, they will probably deal with challenges as if they were traps: they will avoid interacting with them. (because avoiding interacting with a trap that is just a trap is a good move).

So I guess it important to make it clear that traps are traps and challenges are challenges. Or to give means and ways to distinct each one.

It important that players know that a part of the gameplay is to distinct traps from challenges. So they will try to identify what is just a trap and what is a challenge.

Naturally the distinction between traps and challenges is not always clear. Sometime they overlap. For example tricks like drinking pools and magical mirror that randomly give boon or curses.

I agree that sometime it is interesting that the distinction is not clear cut. But I think that for a introducing adventure, it is good to make the distinction clear to avoid ending up with players confusing trap & challenges who mix them up together and end up fearing & avoiding them all.

Now I want to read all your blog posts about trap crafting. ;-)

The Prince of Crows

The prince who reign over one of the old watchtowers (for my Labyrinth Lord campaign).