Spes Magna Games

Back in my 1E days before I joined the Army, we didn’t ever really have just one GM. I ran games. Fred ran games. Big Greg ran games. Ben ran games. Little Greg ran games. We shifted GMing around a bit. With our 1E games, we sort of had a shared campaign set at least somewhat in the World Of Greyhawk. We each had a stable of characters. I didn’t always run Lord Korbok. Some of the time, for example, I was Morgaf the elf wizard. Later on, I had a Morgaf the elf cleric. I have no idea why, but I do remember enjoying cleric Morgaf more than wizard Morgaf.

When not running our characters, we’d make up tales about our characters, and these tales sort of became part of the lore of the campaign, even though they weren’t necessarily ever anything that actually got played out at the table. This is how Lord Korbok ended up with Balor as his archenemy.

Balor was a Type VI demon. Balor was his name, not the sort of monster he was. I don’t remember ever any character actually facing Balor in a game, but he was there, lurking in the background as sort of a metaplot device. If I was running Lord Korbok and he encountered demons, he would wonder, “Did Balor send them?” When I ran games, if demons were part of the adventure, I’d wonder, “Should Balor be involved?”

I can’t say for certain, but this is probably where I first got hooked on the idea of a power-behind-the-scenes villain for a campaign. When I ran the lengthy Man Day Adventures 3E campaign revolving around the Chalice of Dawn, the Deathless One was this sort of villain for much of the campaign. The Deathless One was the uber-lich that the players were tricked into freeing, thus unleasing Nerull’s champion to plague the world. The PCs met him once. Then for the longest time, the Deathless One was just a name rumored to be the source of one evil after another.

The power-behind-the-scenes has been a part of every lengthy campaign I’ve ever run for as long as I can remember. The names, goals, powers, et cetera change from campaign to campaign, genre to genre, but the basic idea remains the same, and it all gets traced back to a part of gaming that I don’t remember ever actually having gamed.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge, 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

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

Today the topic is favorite deity. Well, I’m Catholic, so I’ll go with, “God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”

That said, within the context of D&D, as a player I don’t really have a favorite deity. My first and longest-played character, Lord Jon Korbok, claimed to follow the dwarven wargod, Clangeddin Silverbeard, but that was really more of an excuse for his violence. I’ve seldom played clerics, paladins, druids, et cetera. I did have a 1E paladin. I don’t remember him following a specific deity. The last cleric I remember playing was Zerubbabel Jangle, a 3.5E gnome cleric/rogue who followed Garl Glittergold.

As a GM, however, I definitely have some favorites, especially the Unholy Triumvirate of Erythnul, Nerull, and Hextor. These three were at the heart of many multi-part adventures I’ve run over the years. Most recently, I added Wee Jas to the mix in a campaign that could’ve seen Wee Jas destroying Hextor and absorbing his divine portfolio. Unfortunately, that campaign ended prematurely.

Tags: 30 Day D&D Challenge

First up, the 30-Day D&D Challenge about my favorite class!

Thief. Hands down. No contest. I enjoy the dichotomoy between the thief’s obvious role (the one who steals stuff) and the heroic role that I prefer the game to focus on. My thieves have often been people who want to be out for numero uno, to get rich off the sweat of other folk’s brows, et cetera, but cannot escape the nagging persistence of conscience. This has resulted in some unusual in-play situations.

Back in the day, my friend Fred and I would take turns DMing little solo adventures for each other’s characters. Most often, these involved something happening in a town, and the sessions were often ad-libbed. During one such session with Fred as DM, my most-used PC, Lord Jon Korbok, dwarven fighter/thief, stumbled past a dark alley wherein a youth was being mugged by a gang of ruffians. Korbok loudly scoffed at the ruffians’ technique. He then thrashed the lot of them to show them how a real ruffian takes care of business. After the fight, the exchange went something like this:

Fred as the Rescued Youth: Gosh! Thanks for saving me!

Me as Korbok: Shut up, and give me your gold.

Ah, good times.

And now, a dangerous quartet of alluring villains!

The Seekers of the Eternal Flame seek to cleanse the world of all forms of injustice. Unfortunately, the only way this can be accomplished is to eliminate injustice at its source, which lies within the hearts and minds of people. Those who are not perfectly just must be forced to be just. Those who cannot be forced to act justly must be destroyed. When the time is right, the Eternal Flame will reveal itself. The faithful will be rewarded. The unfaithful will be converted or killed.

There can be no other way.

Protective Aura: A magical aura constantly protects all four Seekers. This aura grants protection against attacks, which explains the Seekers’ Armor Class. It also renders them invulnerable to normal missiles (as protection from normal missiles).

Swords & Wizardry

Bahar
Hit Dice: 10
Armor Class: 4 [15] (vs. melee attacks) or 2 [17] (vs. missile attacks)
Attacks: Fiery touch 2d8
Saving Throw: 5
Special: Ignite materials, immune to fire, protective aura
Move: 12
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 13/2,300

Bahar controls the fires of purification. Her fiery touch inflicts horrible burns and causes flammable materials to ignite if the material fails a saving throw (as determined by the Referee).

Gulzar
Hit Dice: 10
Armor Class: 4 [15] (vs. melee attacks) or 2 [17] (vs. missile attacks)
Attacks: Scimitar (1d8)
Saving Throw: 5
Special: Charming gaze, magic resistance (35%), protective aura
Move: 12
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 13/2,300

Gulzar’s gaze subjects any living creature who meets it to a powerful charm effect (-2 penalty to saving throw, works as charm monster). Gulzar can never have more than 18 Hit Dice worth of creatures charmed at a time.

Minu
Hit Dice: 10
Armor Class: 4 [15] (vs. melee attacks) or 2 [17] (vs. missile attacks)
Attacks: Battle axe (1d8)
Saving Throw: 5
Special: Magic resistance (35%), protective aura, shriek
Move: 12
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 13/2,300

Once every 1d6 rounds, Minu can unleash a shriek of terrible power. All creatures (except for the other Seekers, whose auras protect them from Minu’s shriek) within 50 feet Minu when she shrieks must make a saving throw. Those that fail are stunned for 2d6 rounds and suffer 2d8 points of damage.

Shokufeh
Hit Dice: 10
Armor Class: 4 [15] (vs. melee attacks) or 2 [17] (vs. missile attacks)
Attacks: Quarterstaff (1d6)
Saving Throw: 5
Special: Catch spell, magic resistance (35%), protective aura
Move: 12
Alignment: Chaos
Challenge Level/XP: 13/2,300

Shokufeh has the ability to “catch” spells that target her. If Shokufeh’s magic resistance would protect her from the spell, she “catches” the spell and can immediately “throw” it (even if it isn’t her turn to act). A “thrown” spell takes effect just as if the original caster had targeted whomever Shokufeh chooses as her target.

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