Spes Magna Games

Monday afternoon, I drove over to a friend’s house with my son Christopher and ran a post-apoc game that combines 1978’s Gamma World (GW) with elements from Kevin Crawford’s Ashes without Number (Aw/oN) and Wolves of God (WoG). My friends Mike and his son Peter plus Christopher gave me three players.

We made up characters, taking note of places where Aw/oN and WoG mentioned rules that required some interpretation to fit into GW‘s framework. All three PCs live and work in Oxonia Nova, a thriving village of about 800 souls. After the Great Event that turned the world into a post-apocalyptic patchwork of isolated communities, demon-haunted urban ruins, and dangerous wilderness full of mutant creatures and magical menaces, the Founders of Oxonia Nova rebuilt civilization along the lines of 8th-century Anglo-Saxon England. Oxonia Nova falls under the jurisdiction of a bishop and includes an Augustinian priory. Able-bodied adult citizens of Oxonia Nova are all part of a sort of reserve guard who regularly take shifts in various ways to protect the town.

Christopher, Mike, and Peter made up Albertus Magus, a mutant human Galdorman with the priest background; Raedulf, a mutant rat Warrior with the scavenger background; and Robin, a pure strain human Saint with the outcast background. The trio were pulling night guard in the forest covering the steep hillside that flanks one side of Oxonia Nova. During his shift, Raedulf’s acute rat senses caught of whiff of wet fur and leather wafting on the breeze. Raedulf woke up his two comrades, and then the trio moved out as stealthily as possible to investigate.

Raedulf took the lead, getting ahead of two badders and two arks moving cautiously downhill toward the town. Raedulf noted that it is unusual for arks and badders to work together. Albertus and Robin brought up the rear with less stealth than Raedulf, but the pair saw the four mutant animals slip behind cover. From his position, Raedulf saw them ready ranged weapons, thinking to ambush Albertus and Robin.

The fight that followed was quick and brutal. Raedulf’s razor sharp incisors drew first blood. Albertus summoned a swarm of bees to attack the ark that was barking orders to the other three. Robin threatened divine judgement while promising divine forgiveness should the badders repent of their alliance with the arks. The second ark, seeing the leader swarmed by bees and the badders hesitating to act, used his life leech mutation to kill the bees and the badders while damaging everyone – friend or foe – in a 30 meter radius. Bolstered with more than 40 extra hit points, the ark then fled. Albertus took wing (because he has functional, bat-like wings) and set the fleeing ark ablaze.

Having captured the ark leader, the PCs discovered a large concentrated damage pack (a type of bomb) on the leader’s person. Interrogation revealed some troubling information:

1. The mutant animals were heading to a tower close to town that is part of the aqueduct system that channels rain from the hill to cisterns in town.
2. A traitor in the tower was supposed to let the mutant animals in to plant the concentrated damage pack.
3. The mutant animals belong to the Ranks of the Fit, a neo-Nazi mutant animal supremacist group.

With all that accomplished, we called the game session to a close and made plans to meet again to continue the adventure.

Tags: Gamma World, Oxonia Nova

So, I’m just going to pretend that I haven’t posted anything since July 2025. That’s easier than making excuses.

Ludi Fabularum, the game club I facilitate where I teach, continues to grow. I’ve got more than 20 middle school boys playing Castles & Crusades in a shared campaign world. The boys are divided into four groups. After Thanksgiving break, these groups branch out from Junnmiv, the campaign’s central community, ready to investigate various problems ranging from livestock-stealing stealth humanoids to a city in the mountains that is said to have appeared from nowhere. Three 8th graders help with the GMing.

At home, my Storm Clouds Gather and Heroes of Tejas City campaigns have run into issues. The former is down to two players as our third has had to drop out due to Real Life. The latter has gone into suspended animation because I kept running into a lack of time to prep for the sessions. The heroes did manage to defeat the machinations of Pulcinella and his cabal of villains, but Pulcinella escaped capture.

Since I’m off work this week, tomorrow I’m heading over to a friend’s house with my son Christopher to run a post-apoc game that combines 1978’s Gamma World with elements from Kevin Crawford’s Ashes without Number and Wolves of God. Everything Kevin Crawford writes is RPG gold. If I had few hundred extra dollars just laying around, I’d likely spend it on Sine Nomine Publishing print-on-demand books.

And, since it’s been a few years since I posted anything B-movie related, here’s a new mutant animal inspired by 1957’s classic The Monster That Challenged the World. If you’ve not seen this one, you own it to yourself and all your friends to host a viewing to thrill at the only movie ever made with both giant, flesh-eating sea snails and Chekov’s thermostat.

Syrinx
No. Appearing: 1-10
Armor Class: 2 or 6
Movement: 3/6 swimming
Hit Dice: 12

The syrinx is an enormous sea snail. Fully grown, its shell is about 2 meters across. Attacks against the shell are versus AC 2 and only inflict half damage. The syrinx’s body is slimy and caterpillar-like, capable of extending 3 meters from its shell. The body’s rugged hide is AC 6, and attacks against it inflict normal damage. The syrinx has ultravision. Its powerful mandibles bite for 1-12 points of damage. The mucus that covers its body is an intensity 12 poison that kills by asphyxiation. Each syrinx is a hermaphrodite, capable of fertilizing itself. A syrinx lays a clutch of several hundred eggs over a period of several days in the late summer months.

Tags: B-Movies, Gamma World, monsters

Earlier this week, I whipped out Atelier Clandestin‘s Sandbox Generator and went hex-by-hex to determine the main feature in each hex. (Nota Bene: That product link is still an affiliate link. If you click and purchase, I get a small bit of pocket change.) The results are shown below.

I only tweaked two of the randomly generated features. In Hex 19, there was a repeat of a feature having something to with upcoming weather. Since Hex 8 ended up with a randomly generated “Mycelial Proliferation”, I decided to repeat that result in Hex 19. The second tweaked location is Hex 6, since that’s where I put Unvary-by-Water.

Recall that each hex is 2 miles across. That’s about 10.4 square miles per hex, which might seem small. To get some perspective, imagine that someone stole a vehicle and put it somewhere in 10.4 squares miles of forest. It can take a search party a few hours to cover just one square mile of terrain. If you can’t follow the vehicle tracks leading in, you’re facing a potentially lengthy search.

So, what noteworthy features did I randomly generate?

1. There’s only one other settlement in the region: Nisme-on-the-Hill, a hamlet notable for its tourney grounds. This tells me a couple of things. The were-alligators are not refugees from Nisme. Also, there must be larger communities that include knights somewhere outside the center group of hexes. Nisme could be a stopping point on a commonly traveled road.

2. There are several features both artificial and natural that contain hints about other things. Two of them have clues about a magic weapon. If both are about the same weapon, perhaps these clues are there because adventurers seeking the weapon met some grim fate in Hexes 3 and 13?

3. Three of the results deal with fungus. Hexes 8 and 18 have proliferations of mycelium. Hex 12 has a hallucinogenic spore hazard. These hexes are not that close to each other. Is there a sort of fungus that proliferates when a certain sort of weather is imminent? Does this fungus mature and release hallucinogenic spores?

4. There is a group of orcs camped in Hex 19. Are they responsible for the heads on spikes in Hex 2?

5. A wolf pack hunts near a wooden fence in Hex 4. Why is there a wooden fence?

6. Who excavated the quarry in Hex 10?

7. Bandits and beastmen lair in Hexes 15 and 17, respectively. The bandits are close to both Nisme and Unvary. Do they prey on travelers passing through Nisme to points beyond?

8. There are five dungeons in the region: The Chambers of Twilight (Hex 5), The Haunted Tombs (Hex 7), The Infernal Burrows (Hex 11), The Haunted Pits (Hex 14), and The Crumbling Chambers (Hex 16).

Whew! That’s a lot potential plot hooks in about 200 square miles of territory, and this is only one cluster of hexes. There are six other clusters, yielding about 1,100 square miles of territory.

Tags: Bayou of Feathers, places of power, Sandbox Campaigns, Sandbox Generator

A short post for today, but one that features the start of the hexcrawl map for the group of center hexes that includes Unvary-by-Water in hex 6. The mountains, hills, and forest hexes were marked using a set of delightful stamps I purchased from Lord of Maps. The Map Making Stamp Kit shown in the picture has sixteen pieces. There’s also an Expansion Pack available, but I’ve not purchased it…yet.

Since I don’t yet have stamps for grasslands and swamps, I drew those by hand. The circle in hex 6 indicates that Unvary-by-Water is located there. I would have colored the map, but all of my coloring pencils are in storage in my classroom. I thought I had a set here at home, but, alas! and alack!, I was wrong.

Next up? I need to randomly generate the key features of all the other hexes in the region. I hope to have that done and posted this coming Wednesday.

Tags: Bayou of Feathers, places of power, Sandbox Campaigns

As mentioned in the first post about the Bayou of Feathers:

Legend says that Droainon, Goddess of Water and Sorrow, created the Bayou of Feathers as a gift for Tronsos, God of Thieves and Beauty, who failed to be moved by Droainon’s display of unrequited love. The region had been rolling plains and forests divided by a mighty river. Droainon dammed the river with great granite blocks decorated with an enormous bas-relief of thousands of birds in flight. Hurt by Tronsos’s derision at her gift, Droainon wept bitter tears into the bayou’s waters, and these tears turned the water brackish and pestilential.

Despite these adverse conditions, a group of refugees have settled in the Bayou, taking residence on a small group of a islands:

Refugees fleeing a nearby region have moved into the Bayou of Feathers, encamping a few clustered islands. The establishment of their new community has not been easy. The bayou’s waters are not safe to drink unless properly treated; what’s more, the brackishness makes agriculture difficult.

In the following two posts, I determined that the refugees are were-alligators. This throws a new light on the situation. The brackish water is not a problem for were-alligators, who are primarily carnivorous, thus alleviating the problems that agriculture might suffer. Also, alligators have immune systems well-adapted to swampy environments. So, the plethora of parasites and diseases in the Bayou are not a major concern either. It stands to reason that the refugees chose wisely the Bayou of Feathers. It is something akin to a paradise for were-alligators.

Over the weekend, my lovely wife Katrina and I visited Avery Island in Louisiana. I learned new things, chief of which for this post is that Avery Island sits atop a salt dome. One or more the refugees’ islands also sit above a salt dome, which both provides a natural explanation for the brackish waters and also gives the were-alligators control of a vital resource. That’s right. The were-alligators also mine salt, which is high value export.

As for the were-alligators themselves, I don’t see any reason why they ought to be especially evil. The accusations of cannibalism against them could be true, but what if the refugees only ate those who attacked their community? Under the best of circumstances, cannibalism is socially tricky, but defensive cannibalism could be a bit more palatable. What’s more, the were-alligators have left their belligerent neighbors to settle in an area with no human population, which makes defensive cannibalism unnecessary.

The refugees are not wicked people. They want to be left alone, to raise their families, et cetera. The bulk of the were-alligator community is somewhere near neutral in terms of alignment.

And last, there’s this: When reviewing my previous Bayou of Feathers posts, I reminded myself that I promised a hex map of the region. I need to get to work on that so that maybe – just maybe – I can get it posted later this week.

Tags: Bayou of Feathers, places of power, Sandbox Campaigns