Spes Magna Games

So, it’s a new year, and, to quote Bilbo Baggins, “I’m going on an adventure!”

The Borderlands

I started a ShadowDark campaign. We’re five sessions in using Gary Gygax’s The Keep on the Borderlands as the setting. Each session is on-line via my Discord for audio and my Foundry for virtual table top. I’ve got nine players, only a third of them being people I’ve met in person. The campaign is an open table game. I schedule the sessions when I’m available. Anyone who can show up for the session shows up for the session. Only one of the five adventures started with a mandatory DM plot hook. Otherwise, the players decide based on previous sessions, current rumors, et cetera, where their PCs go and what they want to accomplish when they get there.

I’m having so much fun with The Borderlands that I started up campaign site via a Scabard. Check it out if you want.

The picture below is a graph view of The Borderlands on Scabard with “The Heroes” in the center. This view shows many of the PCs (living and dead) and their connections to people, places, and events. Clicking the link in the Group box takes you to the displayed page. Clicking a picture circle on the graph shifts that picture circle to the center and displays relationships from the new perspective.

Good times!

Middangeard

with the help of my very own The Hero’s Journal (via www.TheHerosJournal.co), I’ve started an ambitious project. The Middangeard campaign setting has lurked around the peripheries of my gaming for decades. The earliest iterations used AD&D (first and second editions) back in the late 1980s to early 1990s. It popped up briefly with Third Edition. Elements of it have made cameos in other games with other systems.

The simple elegance of ShadowDark and Old-School Essentials have pushed me to break out several of my favorite non-D&D and D&D-adjacent games to mine for inspiration while writing my own old Old-School system set in Middangeard. Since 1 January, the very rough draft player’s guide has grown from 0 words and pages to just over 1,000 words stretched unevenly across seven pages. Another document discussing Middangeard’s theogony and history (influenced heavily by philosophy and theology largely Catholic in sensibility) includes a lot of previously blogged material. It’s about 5,800 words across 12 pages. Much of this will end up in the player’s guide.

My initial goal is to have enough of Middangeard completed so that I can start playtesting it by September 2025. After that will come more editing followed by formatting for publication via print on demand. If successful, Middangeard will be second actual book (the first being my superhero RPG The Four Color Hack).

Also!

If you’ve not backed James M. Spahn’s White Box Cyclopedia, you should. Check it out on Kickstarter. Two of James’s books are pictured above among my inspirational (and aspirational) materials. White Box Omnibus is an excellent expansion of Swords & Wizardy White Box(/strong> and The Hero’s Journey RPG is a masterpiece of writing and game design.

Tags: James M. Spahn, Old School Essentials, Shadowdark, WhiteBox

Source: Dungeons & Dragons, Volume II, Monsters & Treasure by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Published in 1974.

Gnole
Roughly man-sized, green-skinned and white-haired, a cherubic face split by a fanged maw, leathery flesh marred by stone-colored warts. Territorial and avaricious, lusting for gems and prey, lairing in dank caverns.

Spelling of the monster’s name and original inspiration likely Lord Dunsany’s “How Nuth Would Have Practised His Art Upon The Gnoles” (from The Book of Wonder, first published in 1914).

AC 13, HP 19, ATK 1 pick +4 (1d6) or 1 javelin (near) +4 (1d4) or 1 bite +3 (1d8), MV near, S +3, D +2, C +2, I +0, W +1, Ch +0, LV 4

Regenerate. Regains 1d6 HP on its turn unless its wounds are cauterized with fire or acid.

Stone Meld. 1/day, underground only. Turn invisible for 3 rounds.

Tags: monsters, Shadowdark

Speaking of ShadowDark (which I did a bit last post), I’ve started working on a new Spes Magna Games project, the first one in quite awhile, that combines my fondness for folklore and my occasional mania for making monsters.

The Denham Tracts are a collection of mid-nineteenth century English pamphlets collected into a single publication by Michael A. Denham. The pamphlets deal with history, poems, proverbs, sayings, slogans, and stories. This collection is most perhaps most famous for its list of creatures popular in folklore, a list that some allege is from where J. R. R. Tolkien took the word “hobbit”.

It is this list of creatures that is the subject of my new Spes Magna Games project. I’m not making a monster for every creature on the list. There is some repetition as it lists the same creature under different names. That said, ignoring repetition, The Denham Tracts provides plenty of inspiration.

For example:

Black Dogs
Black dogs are not truly canines, although they often resemble man’s best friends. A black dog is a supernatural creature, one that possesses uncanny powers and often appears as a harbinger of some terrible, impending fate. All black dogs have a dangerous howl as well as these two traits:

Impervious. While incorporeal, only damaged by silver or magical sources.

Incorporeal. In place of attacks, become corporeal or incorporeal. While incorporeal, ADV on WIS checks to track living creatures.

Gallytrot
A large dog with shaggy fur white like fresh snow, its outline indistinct, hazy, as if the creature fades from canine to fog. Its eyes are featureless, dull blue orbs.

The gallytrot preys on cowards. Its howl sounds like a cacophony of screeching cats and angry hornets.

AC 14, HP 26, ATK 1 bite +3 (1d6), MV double near, S +2, D +2, C +2, I -1, W +1, Ch -1, AL N, LV 4

Howl. Living creatures within near must make a DC 12 CHA check on turn or become scared for 1d4 rounds. While scared, suffer a -2 penalty on attack rolls and checks. If a scared creature is attacked, on its next turn it must only move away from its attacker.

Tags: monsters, Shadowdark

In March of 2023, I had a brain thing related to my migraines, which I’ve experienced since at least middle school (so, circa 1977) or thereabouts. The brain-thing was a few minutes of aphasia and aura. I was in Austin, Texas, with my daughter Adrienne, and we were ready for the drive back to Houston. I sat in the driver’s seat. Adrienne asked me a question, and I couldn’t answer. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t leave my brain through my mouth. At the same time, the aura narrowed my field vision into a blurry circle framed by lights of shifting colors. Adrienne thought I was having a stroke. The aphasia and aura passed entirely after a few minutes, with the aphasia going away first. Adrienne drove us back to Houston.

My migraines almost always start with aura and then move into light sensitivity and pain. During a migraine, nerve cells and blood vessels in the brain stop acting right, and the migraine proceeds through several phases. The last phase is something like having a hangover, and my brain got stuck in this last phase for weeks while I got scanned and experimented on with different vitamins and dosages of meds. Fortunately, despite decades of untreated migraines, I have no structural brain damage, but it does look like there are some functional changes.

The main two are an increased inability to focus on a task for extended periods of time and an decreased ability to process short-term memory into longer-term memory. Put simply, I get distracted more easily, and I’m more likely to forget things. To combat the latter, I’m working on taking better notes in a more organized manner. To-do lists are a regular part of my day, and they are helping.

But my memory issues are complicating my gaming.

I currently run an occasional Wednesday night game (Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics mash-up), an every other Saturday game (Castles & Crusades with elements of Dungeon Crawl Classics), an occasional Sunday game (ShadowDark), a student game-club for 6th graders (Castles & Crusades) and for 7th/8th graders (ShadowDark). This is getting laborious.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy the games. I enjoy the players. I enjoy being the GM. But I’m finding it hard to keep the details of the different games and systems straight, even with the notes I’m taking.

One thing I have noticed is that it’s easier for me to prepare for and keep track of the games using the less crunchy systems, which makes the two ShadowDark games where I feel most confident and most able to keep track of details from session to session. After that, Castles & Crusades is next easiest for me (likely owing to its similarities to 1E AD&D). While I adore Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics, they present me the most challenges in terms of remembering how the games work. (I think this is likely true of my players as well, some of whom I’m know are only playing Dungeon Crawl Classics/Mutant Crawl Classics because I said I wanted to run it. About half my players would prefer Savage Worlds or something d20 System-related.)

Mixed up in all of this is the plain fact that I’m not getting any younger. I can remember the days when I could run four miles in 24 minutes flat, and when I could do at least a dozen one-armed pull-ups with either arm. Those days are gone, and they are exceedingly unlikely to return given the joint health of my left knee and right shoulder. I’m more or less used to the reduced physical strength, speed, and endurance, and I know more exercise and better diet are helping improve all three.

But the past going on two years has been my first experience with decreased mental strength, speed, and endurance. It’s a wee bit annoying. More exercise and better diet will help my brain, but, just as with the chronic low-level knee pain, it seems that a somewhat less efficient brain is my new normal.

What does this mean for my various games? I don’t know yet.

It’s been a while since I posted anything for Savage Worlds, so here’s a new race for that game.

Sciurus (Race Value: 2)
Attribute Increase – Agility: During character creation, a Sciurus increases Agility one die type. This increases the Trait’s maximum by one as well.
Hindrance – Minor: A Sciurus has an innate fear of predatory birds.
Size -1: A Sciurus is smaller than average, reducing its Size and Toughness by 1.
Skill – Athletics: A Sciurus starts with a d6 in Athletics, and the skill’s maximum increases to d12+1.

Tags: character races, Savage Worlds