Spes Magna Games

Again, I’m not quite sure I’m a reflective enough gamer to complete the 30-Day D&D Challenge in its literal intent. I’ve run so many adventures for just about every version of D&D that I’m not sure I can pick a favorite one. I can, however, at least pick out one adventure that I’ve enjoyed, specifically The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth. I’ve run this delightful module three different times that I remember. I’ve never had a party of adventurers complete the module with what could be called rousing success. Two parties failed; the third survived but unleashed a horrible evil.

The first time I ran Lost Caverns was in high school. I don’t remember everyone who played. Fred was there, probably running Blake. Big Greg was there, and he definitely ran a cleric of Poseidon. (Why Poseidon was a deity in the World of Greyhawk is a mystery.) There were other players, perhaps Little Greg, the other Mark, and Ben. Someone was playing a cleric of Thor.

Regardless, the adventure proceeded apace through the lesser caverns until the party reached the gorgimera cavern. Aside from the gorgimera, there were stairs leading from this cavern down to the greater caverns. I described how the gorgimera took wing as the party entered, maneuvering to attack. For some reason I’ve forgotten, the players sort of panicked, especially Big Greg. The cleric of Poseidon had a necklace of prayer beads that included the bead of summoning. So, Big Greg, thinking that the party needed direct divine assistance against the fearsome gorgimera, used this bead to call forth Poseidon himself.

I described how Poseidon appeared in all his divine majesty. How the stones shook. How the cavern grew larger to accommodate his awesome stature. How Poseidon casually swatted the gorgimera from the air, killing it, and then asked, “For what great purpose have you summoned me?”

This was not what Big Greg expected to happen, and Poseidon was displeased to have been summoned for so trivial as task of slaying a mere gorgimera. In tribute, he demanded one magic item from each party member. The cleric of Thor balked. Poseidon reminded his cleric (Big Greg’s PC) that “[n]o cleric [of a Greek mythos deity] may have dealings with clerics of other sects for any reason (on non-hostile terms) as this is considered a minor transgression by their deity and punishable by the stripping away of the third and higher levels of spells for a lunar month” (1E Deities & Demigods). Poseidon demanded his cleric teach the cleric of Thor a lesson in manners to avoid this punishment. This resulted in a cleric versus cleric smackdown which Big Greg’s cleric won. Poseidon took as many magic items as he wanted from the defeated cleric of Thor.

Then, just before leaving, Poseidon used his prerogatives as the god of natural disasters to have an earthquake strike the caverns, collapsing the paths back out of the lesser caverns to the surface and leaving the party no choice but to head down to the greater caverns despite their weakened state.

The party continued on. They eventually faced Drelzna, and the survivors managed to return to the surface, but poorer and perhaps wiser than when they went in. Lost Caverns tore through their resources, and I think the cleric of Thor was dead by the end of the adventure.

The second time I ran Lost Caverns I was stationed at either Fort Bragg, North Carolina, or Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. I don’t remember who the players were, which might mean I wasn’t running the adventure for my regular gaming groups at those duty stations. (That would be either the group with Wayne Royals or with Lewis Pulsipher at Fort Bragg, or the group with Ron Chance [no relation] at Schofield.)

Anyhoo, what I do remember transpired in the greater caverns, so I’m guessing the group did okay in the lesser caverns. I think it was during the fight against the demonic bar-lguras that one of the PCs died. The party retreated and, by accident, ended up in the cave with the chasme demons. Since the party had just suffered a defeat, I decided the chasme would be more conversational than confrontational.

For some reason, the players decided to trust the demonic fly monsters. I mean, what could go wrong? Right?

Turns out, plenty went wrong. The adventurers lamented the loss of their party member, and asked if the chasmes could help. One of them assured the PCs that, yes, it could restore the dead to life, but the process took a little time. The party agreed, and so the chasme rammed its proboscis into the corpse’s chest and pumped in a load of demonological goo. (By this time, I was just making stuff up as I went along.) The chasme told the adventurers to take the corpse with them, and after a while he would revive.

So, the adventurers took the corpse with them, and after a while the cadaver exploded, releasing several more chasme that had spawned from the demonological goo. At this time, the other chasme and the bar-lgura ambushed the party. During the resulting slaughter of PCs, two of the adventurers fled in terror, desperately hoping to find some safe haven. They found it by blundering into the magical cavern which teleported them into an alternate dimension valley populated by centaurs. Without the means to return to the cavern, and with the rest of the party dead, that particular foray into the caverns came to a screeching halt.

The last time I ran Lost Caverns was after I converted the module to 3E/3.5E for Man Day. The adventure became part of the campaign’s metaplot that pitted the PCs against a gradually revealed plot by forces loyal to Nerull, Erythnul, and Hextor to conquer a large swath of the World of Greyhawk. I replaced Drelzna with a monster called the Abyssal Mind, which turned out to be a fiendish vampiric intellect devourer.

This last group was the most successful, completing the modified module with no PC deaths (as far as I can remember). Unfortunately, they did fail to defeat the Abyssal Mind, and that horrible monster escaped its prison in the greater caverns to spread its evil on the surface. This was sort of recurring motif in that particular campaign. The PCs would defeat the forces of badness, but some element of badness would escape in order to cause trouble later on, such as when the adventurers were manipulated into freeing the Deathless One, a lich in service to Nerull.

But that’s another story.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge, dungeon crawls, monsters

I’m starting to think the 30-Day D&D Challenge overestimates how detailed my memory is. I started playing D&D in the late 6th grade or early 7th grade. I’m 45, and I was pretty much always a year younger than most of my same-grade-level peers. I’ll let you do the math for how long I’ve been gaming. So, with my spotty memory in mind, this might not actually be the craziest thing I’ve witnessed happen during a game.

Way back when I was still in high school (graduated 1985), we were hanging out at Big Greg’s apartment, playing 1E. I was running Lord Korbok. Fred was running Blake, his magic-user/thief (who I think was still an elf at this time). Another Mark was running a ranger, if I recall correctly, probably his (in)famous Count de Monet. Our PCs had just low-crawled through a tunnel to reach a ledge that overlooked a large cavern. Below us, a group of giant two-headed trolls milled about, doing trolly things. We’d never encountered giant two-headed trolls before. They may have even been a relatively new monster in 1E at the time.

“What are those?” said Blake.

“Kinda look like trolls, but more gianty and with two heads,” said Korbok.

“I wonder if they’re ‘giant-class’ monsters,” said Count de Monet. “If they are, I do more damage against them.”

“Well, there’s one way find out,” said Korbok, who then shoved Count de Monet as hard as he could from behind, toppling the ranger off the ledge.

“Count de Monet falls thirty feet, taking three die six points of damage,” said the DM.

“Nuh uh. He’s wearing a ring of feather falling.”

“Oh, that’s right,” said the DM. “In the case, he floats gently down into the middle of the giant two-headed trolls. Roll for initiative.”

It turned out that, yes, Count de Monet did get bonus damage against giant two-headed trolls. After the first round of combat, Lord Korbok, not wanting to be left out of the carnage, executed a belly flop down into the combat, no ring of feather falling required.

Ah, good times.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge

I guess in a way I’m cheating a bit today because I’m not writing specifically about D&D. I do have two characters that I’ve always wanted to play, but have never gotten to. Neither were made for D&D, but they were made for games that would almost certainly not exist had D&D not made the shift to the d20 System with 3E. The first character is Shaolin Beaver for Mutants & Masterminds. The other is William Robert Kelly for True20 Adventure Roleplaying. Enjoy!

Shaolin Beaver
Quote: “Shaolin is the wine of peacefulness, not the vinegar of hostility.”
Concept: Anthropomorphised beaver kung-fu master
Occupation: Sifu
Real Name: Edward
Legal Status: Naturalized citizen of the United States of America with no criminal record
Identity: Public
Place of Birth: Forests of the North American Pacific Northwest
Marital Status: Widowed
Living Relatives: None known
Height: 3 ft. 7 in.
Weight: 58 lb.
Eyes: Dark brown
Fur: Golden brown with reddish highlights
Motivation: Goodness, quest
Complications: Enemy, honor, obsession

Background: Edward is perhaps the last member of a sentient race of humanoid beavers native to the North American Pacific Northwest. Habitat destruction, poaching, and an outbreak of deadly beaver flu have apparently destroyed this once noble people. Edward himself was captured by unscrupulous xenocollectors shortly after he buried his wife Margaret, who had died from the beaver flu.

A lapse in security let Edward escape from the xenocollectors, but his absence did not long go undetected. Pursued through the forests near Mount Ranier in Washington, Edward suffered a gunshot wound and fell several yards into a shallow stream. Injured and terrified, he still managed to elude capture, stumbling into the campsite of Mr. and Mrs. Ethan Stone of Seattle.

The Stones took Edward back to their home and nursed him to health. As fate would have it, Ethan was a student of Deng Ming Dao, a Chinese expatriate and one of the last true Shaolin masters. Edward and Deng Ming Dao became fast friends, and Edward evidenced great natural talent for the study of kung-fu.

After a long period of martial arts schooling, a sense of wanderlust possessed Edward. He donned the traditional orange robes of a Shaolin monk and traveled the land, earning his keep through a variety of odd jobs and having adventures. Throughout his travels, he remains ever-vigilant for rumors about others of his kind.

STR 10 (+0); DEX 20 (+5); CON 16 (+3); INT 11 (+0); WIS 18 (+4); CHA 11 (+0)

TOU +8/+3*; FORT +8; REF +15; WILL +10; INIT +9; KNOCKBACK -3/+0*

* If flat-footed

MELEE +15; RANGE +8; GRAPPLE +11; DAMAGE +5 Strike (crit 18-20); DEFENSE +12

Skills: Acrobatics 12 (+17), Concentration 9 (+13), Craft (structural) 4 (+4), Escape Artist 10 (+15), Knowledge (theology and philosophy) 5 (+5), Notice 6 (+10), Search 6 (+6), Sense Motive 12 (+16), Stealth 4 (+13)

Feats: Acrobatic Bluff, Assessment, Attack Focus 9 (melee), Attack Focus 2 (ranged), Blind-Fight, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 5, Evasion, Grappling Finesse, Improved Critical 2 (Strike), Improved Disarm, Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Improved Trip, Power Attack, Prone Fighting, Redirect, Set-Up, Stunning Attack, Takedown Attack 2, Trance, Ultimate Skill (Sense Motive), Uncanny Dodge (Auditory)

Powers:
* Shrinking 4 (Size: Small; Power Feat: Innate; Flaw: Permanent [-1])
* Strike 5
* Swimming 2 (Speed: 5 MPH)

William Robert Kelly
Quote: “Well, I’ll be super-amalgamated!”
Profession: Archaeologist
Legal Status: Citizen of the United States with no criminal record
Place of Birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Marital Status: Single
Height: 5 ft. 7 in.
Weight: 145 lb.

Description: William is slightly built but healthy. His dark brown hair is flecked through with gray. His clothes are usually rumpled. His pith helmet is ubiquitous.

Background: William Robert Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 2, 1899. From an early age, he evidenced both an extraordinary memory and intelligence. William absorbed information like a dry sponge soaks up water. He rapidly progressed through the education system into university well ahead of his peers.

Today, William is one of the most brilliant minds of his generation. He earned his Ph.D.s in archaeology and botany from Fordham University, his Doctorate of Sacred Theology from the Istituto Pontificio di S. Anselmo (an honor seldom bestowed upon a layperson), and (most recently) his Doctor of Medicine from Harvard University all before his thirtieth birthday. William is also an astonishing polyglot who is fluently reads, speaks, and writes ten languages (including his native English).

After Harvard Medical School in 1929, William traveled to Canton City, China, as part of a Catholic missionary group. There he helped establish and staff a hospital, and also trained Chinese volunteers to act as nurses and orderlies. In his spare time, he became friendly with British archaeologists excavating Nanyue Palace and eventually started to help with the dig and item classifications.

While working the Nanyue Palace site, William befriended Bai Mu Dan, one of the Chinese workers and a master of Shequan, or “snake fist” kung fu. William and Bai spent many late night hours discussing the history of the Wudang Mountain Taoist masters and drinking large quantities of Du Kang. William even learned the rudiments of Shequan from Bai, making William probably the first Westerner to be taught this form of kung fu.

Starting in 1931, the disruptions caused by conflicts between Chinese nationalists, the revolutionary Chinese Socialist Republic, and the Japanese annexation of Manchuria made Canton City too dangerous for Westerners. William left China and the Catholic missionary group, and he traveled west to India with Bai and the British archaeologists who’d become William’s colleagues.

William became involved with a dig site in northern India centered on the tombs of several late Gupta dynasty kings. William noticed a peculiar similarity between motifs and Sanskrit engravings found in India with motifs and Cantonese writings found at Nanyue Palace. Local Indian folktales also bore striking similarities with Bai’s tales of the Wudang Mountain Taoist masters.

After several months in India, William said good-bye to his friends and traveled farther to the west through Persia and on into Egypt. Everywhere he went, he found variations of the same motifs and legends, all centered around an eternal struggle between heroes and the agents of a horrible snake demon. While the snake demon’s name changed from language to language, they all were a variation on idiomatic expressions roughly translated into English as, “It Who Envenoms Darkness.”

William became convinced that all of these various legends and artifacts had a common origin in eastern central Europe among the Indo-Europeans. The oldest indications of the snake cult were found in the Indus River Valley, where the creature was known by the Sanskrit word transliterated as Yig. William also has good reason to believe that the disparate snake demon cults found from North Africa to Southern China still exist today as potentially dangerous secret societies.

After five years of travel and research, William has recently returned to the United States to compile his findings for eventual publication. In his spare time, he teaches as an adjunct professor of archaeology and paleobotany at Harvard University.

Role: Expert 3
Conviction: 4
Virtue: Intrepid
Vice: Acerbic

STR +0; DEX +1; CON +1; INT +4; WIS +0; CHA +0
TOU +2; FORT +2; REF +2; WILL +3
INIT +1; DODGE +1; PARRY +0; BASE ATTK +2
MELEE +3; RANGED +3; DEFENSE +7
WEALTH +12; REPUTATION +1

Languages: Aramaic, Cantonese, English (native), French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Sanskrit

Skills: Craft (mechanics) +10, Disable Device* +10, Knowledge (history) +10, Knowledge (life sciences) +10, Knowledge (supernatural) +10, Knowledge (theology and philosophy) +10, Medicine* +6, Notice +6, Ride* +7, Search* +10, Sense Motive +6, Survival +6

Feats: Canny Dodge, Defensive Roll, Eidetic Memory, Improved Critical (unarmed strike), Improved Unarmed Strike, Seize Initiative, Skill Mastery (* skills)

Special Equipment:

Masterwork “Snake Gloves”
* These leather gauntlets are reinforced with knuckle studs and iron fingertip spikes grant a +1 bonus to attack rolls and damage with unarmed strikes.

Masterwork “Hypo-Darts”
* William designed these special darts. When thrown properly, a hypo-dart injects a spring-loaded needle that delivers a powerful dose of narcotics. They are well-balanced (granting a +1 attack roll bonus). The drug dose induces fatigue (Fort save DC 15). A hypo-dart cannot pierce medium or heavy armor. A hypo-dart has a range increment of 20 ft.

Masterwork “Bang Stick”
* William also designed this special walking stick. When the handle is twisted to the “on” position (a move action), the business end becomes capable of discharging a modified shotgun slug as a melee attack (+6 damage bonus). Reloading the “bang stick” requires a move action. William enjoys a +1 attack roll bonus with this weapon.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge, Mutants & Masterminds, True20

While I did run other D&D characters, none of them saw as much play as did Lord Jon Korbok, who saw action off and on for at least two decades. He went in search of the unknown. He fought slavers, giants, and drows. He explored hidden shrines, lost caverns, horrific tombs, and ancient spaceships.

He participated in the abduction of the Duke and Duchess of Urnst. He carved out a freehold in the eastern reaches of the Yeomanry near the border of the Hold of the Sea Princes. For a while, he was afflicted with lycanthropy of the wererat variety. For a while, he was a psionic shapeshifter. He once threw a vorpal sword overboard while sailing to the Amedio Jungle because the weapon made combat too easy. On that same voyage, he dove into the sea and fought a shark while unarmored, driving the animal off with a dagger. He used a wish to gain the ability to speak with wolves. While questing for a chalice artifact, he “emptied” a ring of wishes to change the course of a river and move oases, completely altering the economics of the desert region.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, Korbok started as a 0E dwarf fighter. He morphed into a fighter/thief for 1E and 2E, and he saw retirement when I started playing 3E a year or so after moving back to Houston after getting out the U. S. Army. I thought about restarting Korbok as a 3E dwarf fighter/rogue, but it somehow seemed wrong.

Korbok was a World of Greyhawk PC. He was from Ironspyre, a city I invented and located in the Yatil Mountains. As a youth, he was captured by hobgoblins in a raid and taken as a slave. He earned his freedom by defending his master’s wife and children when the hobgoblin camp was attacked by orcs of the Vile Rune clan. Korbok came to view the Vile Rune clan as his archnemesis. He actively sought to destroy the entire clan. His lust for orc blood earned him the soubriquet “Orc-Slayer”. Korbok was violent, deceptive, and capricious, but he developed a strange sense of honor. He’d steal from party members one minute, and then hurl himself into the path of serious danger in order to defend those party members. If Korbok said he was going to do something, he’d do it or die trying.

He was mainly known as a thief, but his skills as a fighter couldn’t be underestimated. If the party already had a thief, Korbok would sometimes don his magical plate mail and take up his rod of lordly might, forgoing his thief skills in favor of being a front-line fighter.

My friend Fred ran an elf magic-user/thief named Blake Aldread. Blake and Korbok were fast friends, and their adventures became the stuff of folktales. This became even more true after Blake died and was reincarnated as a troll. Several years ago, when I wrote the Tamerland section of Dawnforge, Korbok and Blake (as well as nods to three characters being played in then-current 3.5 campaign) became official parts of a published setting (albeit Korbok did so under the name “Korbok Flinteye”). I tried to work Korbok’s tavern, the Greasy Rat, into Dawnforge, but the editors changed the tavern’s name to the Dire Vulture.

Nota Bene: The illustration above was done by Fred’s father, Fred Senior. Fred Junior gave it to me as a present several years after his father died in a automobile accident and several years before Fred himself would die of an aneurysm.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge

One week into the 30-Day D&D Challenge brings me to my favorite edition and another cop-out post. I don’t really have a favorite edition. I’ve played every edition of D&D up to but excluding 4E. I’ve enjoyed them all. Nowadays, if I’m GMing, I’d prefer to avoid editions later than 2E. I find them too work-intensive for game prep, and I no longer have that kind of time or energy. If I’m not GMing, but instead am actually getting to run a PC, I don’t think it’d matter to me much which edition I was playing. They all have their good and bad points.

That said, I would like to get to play in a 0E game again. It’s been more than two decades since I got to do that. I vaguely remember the last time 0E was on the table. I made up a halfling. That was it. Both his race and his class were halfling. I don’t recall the specifics about which flavor of 0E it was. I think that Jeff Dee’s picture of the long-haired human squatting to talk to one or more halflings was on the page that described what halflings could do.

Unfortunately, for the foreseeable future, I’m the GM for Man Day Adventures, so the odds of me getting another chance to play that halfling seem small.

Ah, well. Next up, here’s a new monster and a spell to go with it.

Hungry Ghost
Hit Dice: 2
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Attacks: 2 claws (1d3), 1 gore (1d4)
Saving Throw: 16
Special: Clairvoyance, teleport
Move: 6
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 4/120

A hungry ghost is a horrible undead creature that appears as a humanoid with a deformed body: spindly limbs, tusks like a boar and claws, a long and slender neck, and a bloated abdomen. A hungry ghost was a person with a passion for some pleasure that ruled his life, leading him to commit all manner of crimes to sate his inordinate desires. In undeath, this inordinate desire becomes insatiable hunger, made all the more torturous since the hungry ghost cannot gulp down food through its scrawny neck without suffering terrible pain. Hungry ghosts can see through solid stone and other obstacles within a range of 60 feet. Hungry ghosts can also teleport short distances (up to 15 feet). It can do so and attack in the same turn. In most cases (75%), a hungry ghost teleports behind an opponent and attacks from the rear (with appropriate bonuses). These monsters cannot see through obstacles that have been appropriately blessed or that stand on consecrated ground. Likewise, they cannot teleport through or within such places.

Jautan’s Abhorrent Attendants
Spell Level: Magic-User, 5th Level
Range: Referee’s Discretion
Duration: 1 day

This spell conjures hungry ghosts. 1d4 hungry ghosts are conjured per level of the caster above 8th. The monsters remain until slain or until 24 have passed.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge, monsters, Swords & Wizardry