I shuffled my Atmar’s Cardography cards from Norse Foundry dealt out the top four, and arranged to form a mini-dungeon. With graph paper, pencil, felt tip pen, and an eraser, I turned the cards into the The Chamber of the Crooked Star, a 1E AD&D micro-dungeon. You can download the PDF of this mini-dungeon by clicking on the correct link.
Enjoy!
I recently blogged about prizes I’d won by entering Benchleydale and Beyond contests. Since then, I’ve received the prizes. I’ve also helped a nephew, my sister, my wife, and my son fight ghosts and hunt for treasures. I do live an exciting life, don’t I?
First up: Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters! from Mattel Games. I learned about this great family game from The Tabletop Bellhop. The bellhop Moe T. writes about this boardgame on his blog. You can read his words right here. Before I talk a bit about the game, let’s look at a picture.
Nota Bene: All of the pics in this post embiggen if you click them.
In short: Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters! is a hoot. When we first set it up to play, we had fun sticking the ghosts on our fingers and noticing the functional backpacks on the player pieces. At first, we were a bit skeptical about the game play. It just seemed too easy to roll the dice, move to the rooms, retrieve the treasures, and escape the haunted house unscathed. You can fight the ghosts, but the ghosts can’t fight you. But here’s the rub: Each player turn, a card gets turned up, which almost always adds another ghost to one of the rooms in the haunted house.
(A quick aside about the cards: They’re delightful; details on the cards sync up with little details on the gameboard.)
But back to the increasing number of ghosts. When a room gets its third ghost, the ghosts turn into a red and scary haunt. It takes two players working together to defeat a haunt, and if the house ends up with six haunts, that’s it. Game over. Everyone at the table loses, and the undead win. Ooh, spooky.
Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters! was great fun, and we just played the basic game. The advanced game ups the difficulty. This is one of funner so-called kids’ games I’ve played. If you’d like to buy your own Ghost Fightin’ Treasure Hunters!, click over to Moe T.’s blogpost and use his affiliate link. Moe T. does great work with The Tabletop Bellhop, and his affiliate links help him ensure the great work continues.
A set of Atmar’s Cardography cards from Norse Foundry was among the prizes I won via the aforementioned Benchleydale contests. The cards come in a standard playing card sized box, and the cards themselves are sturdy and a bit glossy, just like I expect a new deck of cards to be. Take a gander at the pic below.
On a whim, I shuffled the deck and dealt out the top nine cards, which I then assembled into a mini-dungeon.
Note the numbers on the cards. The deck comes with a quad-fold mini-document that briefly describes each numbered map location. If you look at the mini-dungeon pic, you’ll see location 27. According to the key, location 27 has “Many fires with large cauldrons simmering and boiling.” Down in the southeast corner, that blurry 44 means a “Dining hall filled with fur tapestries. Magic torch in the center of the main table.”
(Another Nota Bene: It can be annoying how my hands shake.)
My Atmar’s Cardography deck is neat. Good production values, clever concept, and Norse Foundry has written downloadable modules based on the cards. The modules are available on their website, and are written for Fate and 5E D&D. I don’t how much I’d stick to the deck’s in-box location key, but I can see me dealing out the cards to create random dungeons. Between the number of cards in the deck and the various ways the orientations for card placement, the deck has the potential to generate quite a large number of dungeon maps.
Benchleydale Academy is (to quote the group’s description) “the NSFW hardcore gonzo 1st edition AD&D chills, spills and thrills” game masterminded by Timothy Connolly. The public face shines on Facebook via Benchleydale and Beyond. I’m more a lurker than a participant in Benchleydale Academy, at least so far. One of these days, a Benchleydale event will happen at a time when my schedule permits me to get stuck in the interwebs for a few hours.
The Academy has a number of a partners, many of whom offer prizes to Academy members who participate in on-line contests. Each contest consists of a themed challenge, a sort of mini-creative writing exercise that requires a response of exactly eleven words. Recently, I won two of these contests. I’ve yet to receive the prizes, but surely when I receive them pictures shall be shared.
I’m receiving “a sealed deck of Atmar’s Cardography”, specifically the Break Through the Icy Divide, “a 52 card dungeon crawl module for use with your favorite roleplaying game”, produced by Norse Foundry, provider of “quality products such as Role playing Game Dice, Game Mats to shield your table from any damage, and the finest of dwarven currency to carry everywhere you go.” To win this prize, I had to charm a frost giant and describe what it would do for me. My eleven-word description? He will call me George and love me and pet me.
I also won the contest sponsored by Antediluvian Miniatures, purveyor of fine figures “[i]nspired by the lost worlds of Jules Verne, HG Wells and other illuminating tales”. From Antediluvian Miniatures, I shall receive a few figurines cast in pewter. The contest attached to this prize was to name and create a dinosaur. Here’s mine: Umbrasaurus: Dead dinosaurs come back as incorporeal spirits that haunt primordial places. (Nota Bene: The name does not count against the eleven-word limit.) See below for the monster stats of sample umbrasaurus.
Umbrasaural Deinonychus
Frequency: Very rare
No. Appearing: 1-3
Armor Class: 4
Move: 21″ (MC: A)
Hit Dice: 4+1
% in Lair: Nil
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 3
Damage/Attack: 1-2/1-2/2-8
Special Attacks: See below
Special Defenses: +1 or better weapon to hit
Magic Resistance: See below
Intelligence: Semi-
Alignment: Neutral evil
Size: L (12′ long)
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil/nil
Level/XP Value: V/290 + 5/hp
In life, this monster was a fast carnivore that used its speed, grasping forearms, large teeth, and fierce rear talons to bring down prey. Whatever dark necromancy transforms a dead dinosaur into an umbrasaurus has altered the form and function of the deinonychus, granting into horrible powers and a dim, evil intelligence.
The incorporeal umbrasaural deinonychus has most of its existence on the negative material plane. It still moves swiftly, but now it flies, even moving through solid matter (albeit at two-thirds its normal speed). So swift and silent does the umbrasaural deinonychus move that it surprises opponents 50% of the time. Its claws and fangs inflict icy wounds, and its bite is so cold that each hit drains 1 point of the victim’s dexterity. If a living opponent reaches 0 dexterity, the victim becomes paralyzed and helpless. Note that dexterity returns to a creature 2-8 turns after being drained.
Sleep, charm, hold, and cold-based spells cannot affect the umbrasaural deinonychus. Poison and paralyzation are likewise ineffective. A vial-full of holy water inflicts 2-8 points of damage if it hits the umbrasaural deinonychus. Treat the umbrasaural deinonychus as a wraith for purposes of turning the undead.
Merry Christmas!
The twelve days of Christmas are almost over, which means Santa’s Holiday Bag of PDFs for 5E D&D will be going away soon. If you’ve not gotten your bundle yet, there’s still time. Also, The Lady in the Shoe, a short adventure for 5E D&D, received a four-star rating today. That’s cool. I dig four stars. I’m a bit curious, however, since it’s just a rating, not a review, but still that’s four stars.
In homefront gaming news, our Saturday game, diminished to a mere two players (excluding me as GM) finished our year-long d20 Modern/Call of Cthulhu campaign that featured time travel, mind/body swapping, space stations, the return of the Old Ones, and rocket-building followers of Nyarlathotep working with Nazis in a secret base within an Egyptian pyramid.
Grant and Kelly, the last two active PCs, infiltrated the pyramid. Using a combination of stealth, memory-clouding magic, and disguises, they made their way to the payload module of the rocket. Kelly being a literal rocket scientist modified the rocket’s telemetry so that it would not complete its decades long flight toward the Sun to create the apocalyptic solar event that started the campaign in our somewhat distant future. Grant and Kelly realized they had little chance to sneaking back out of the pyramid without being detected. So, they concealed themselves in the rocket, which blasted off on schedule. Grant and Kelly died by the time the rocket left the Earth’s atmosphere, confident that they had averted the end of the world that they had witnessed from the decks of Space Station Alpha.
Our next Saturday campaign kicks off in a couple of weeks. It looks like we’re turning to Savage Worlds with elements of Broken Earth adapted to what will likely be a sandbox-style campaign. From the Broken Earth Player’s Guide, the main focus will likely be on the equipment and the community building rules. I’ve not read through much of the Broken Earth core rules, so I don’t how much that will come into play, but since I’m not GMing, I guess I don’t need to worry about that too much.
I’ve not abandoned the Cliff of Crypts. I’ve completed maps for each level of the crypts, including ghoul tunnels leading to caves. I’ll likely use the maps for a new adventure, but at the moment I’m up in the air about the adventure’s system. Not sure where I’m going to land, but possibly my feet will alight upon For Gold & Glory.
Nota Bene: The links in the previous three paragraphs are affiliate links. If you clink and buy, I get a few pennies.
Welcome to 2021, and Merry Christmas!
Let’s kick off the New Year with another For Gold & Glory monster. This is inspired by Jack Badashski’s Reaper.
Arrach
Climate/Terrain: Any
Frequency: Rare
Number Appearing: 1d8+2
Organization: Squad
Activity Cycle: Night
Intelligence: 13-14
Treasure: C (magic items are armor or weapons only)
Alignment: Lawful evil
Armor Class: 3
Movement: 12, fly 24 (MC 2)
Hit Dice: 6+6 (33 hp)
THACO: 15
Attack: 2 by weapon
Saving Throws: Fighter 7
Special Traits: Dancing weapons, magical weapons needed to hit, snares, spell immunities
Magic Resistance: None
Size: Man-sized (about 6′ tall)
Morale: 15
Experience: 3,000
The arrach are semi-corporeal undead, shadowy figures of bone, tattered robes, and blood-stained weapons, held together by malice and bloodlust. By day, the arrach wait impatiently in sunless places. After the sun sets, the arrach rush from hiding, seeking victims in a vain attempt to sate their hunger to inflict pain and death.
Arrach hunt in squads that operate with martial discipline. They fight intelligently and ruthlessly, not hesitating to retreat in order to survive long enough to fight again.
Arrach speak whatever languages they knew in life. Most arrach were evil soldiers of some sort who died violently.
Combat: Arrach attack with weapons, favoring swords, scythes, and spears. Each arrach carries 1d4+2 weapons and 1d3 bear traps. These weapons and traps are carried by folds of tattered cloth, skeletal limbs, et cetera. The round after an arrach’s weapon inflicts damage against a living foe, the weapon animates, flying up to 30 feet per round but never moving more than 30 feet from its owner. An animated weapon attacks once per round for four rounds, using the arrach’s THAC0. After four rounds, an animated weapon returns to its owner. The arrach’s dancing weapon attacks are in addition to its normal attacks.
The arrach’s bear traps pose a more subtle threat. Each trap functions much like a snare spell cast by a 6th-level priest, except that the arrach cannot use a tree, and the beartrap inflicts 1d6+1 points of damage. Each beartrap can be used once per night, and the arrach must spend three rounds setting the trap for it to function.
Arrach are immune to normal weapons and cold-based attacks. Nonmagical silver weapons inflict only half damage to them. As undead creatures, they cannot be affected by charm, hold person, and sleep spells. Poison and paralysis are likewise powerless against them. Holy water inflicts 2d4 points of damage per vial to an arrach, and sunlight renders this monster powerless and vulnerable to mundane weapons.
