Ode to Pat's CoC game.

Due to a description of some mysterious events relayed by a Twitter friend this morning. I feel compelled to tell you of a great game and great CoC Keeper.

Sherman, set the Wayback machine for the mid eighties.

   Gathered around a dining room table, lights turned low, Wagner player low on the stereo. 3 adolescent boys huddled over one of the earliest editions of Call of Cthulhu. One keeper and 2 players. Now, being the adolescents we were back then, we had wild flights of fantasy. The two players, One Mr. Steve Martin (NO not that Steve Martin) and yours truly, Temmogen Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse and all around good guy. Of course I went by a different name back then. A name that wasn't so grandiose. The keeper was an older guy by about 6 or 7 years. That's a testament to his patience that he would actually play with us lunatics. Pat was probably my oldest friend. I knew him since I first started high school. Pat died a few years back from complications due to diabetes, and I do miss him. But I digress...
   Anyway... We two boneheads had decided we wanted to play ourselves in the game. Yes yes, this shows a stunning lack of maturity and imagination, but we were young and we had a plan. If we played ourselves, we could take all of "so called" knowledge from current day and defeat any threat thrown at us. Remember I did say we were young. Among the entertainments Steve and myself pursued irl, was shooting out streetlights with his bb gun. Just. Don't. Ask. Idiocy runs in in the age group. Anyway, Pat knew of this and had a little surprise for us.
   There we were, sitting is Steve's Camaro down at the Castle Pines exit of the highway. Loading the bb gun in preparation of some prime glass shattering. We pulled up stealthily under our intended victim, when all of a sudden the streetlight sprouted arms and a pair of baleful red eye stalks. Panic ensued. At the table and in the game. We started looking frantically for anything to kill off the newly dubbed "Lamploths". Steve blew one drive skill check, and that was all our devious keeper needed. We ended up driving into a ginormous propane tank and getting blown back through time. We awoke to the face of a very befuddled looking professor from one Miskatonic University. He was about to start dissection procedure on the two strangely dressed humanoids that had been discovered at the site of an oil well explosion in New Jersey.
   We had to revise our plan. In case anyone is wondering, it is considerably harder to steal dynamite in the present day world. Back in the 20's and 30's, they weren't so strict with it. During the course of that game, Steve and I managed to blow up 5 cars and at least 2 multi story domiciles. Much to the chagrin of our NPC handlers. We never did get those Byakhee.
   Yes we died in a construction site explosion while attempting to steal more dynamite (The Arkham police had started locking it up because of our antics) but for 3 months, we had a blast. Very few games have been that much fun since. I miss Pat. But he did give me the gift of many pleasant gaming memories. Remind to tell you about Alastair Carstai's adventures in Algeria one day...

Happy Gaming!

More questions for Return to the Barrier peaks

Trite: (of a remark, opinion, or idea) overused and consequently of little import; lacking originality or freshness.

This is what I'm trying to avoid. I don't want the PCs t have to work their way up the Valley of the Mage, that's an exercise in attrition. Allowing them to start at the lair of the BBEG, might not prepare them for the fight. I don't think anyone really enjoys a tpk...

Do we have the BBEG's army march on some unsuspecting victim, thereby removing the majority of them as an obstacle?
Are they just apathetic?
Maybe there is a resistance among the population of the valley?

or maybe...

How about this?
   The Laird of the valley, has indeed made an army from the technology he discovered on the ship. However, when he abandoned the ship thinking he had unlocked all it's secrets, he didn't dispatch the Mind Flayer. The Mind Flayer phoned home, and now he has to contend with an Illithid conclave. He calls for those stout of heart to vanquish the illithid menace.
Will the players figure out the Laird is neutral evil?
Will they turn on him when they're done with the flayers?

Plans within plans... This could get very convoluted.

OK, so how about... The Laird hires the PCs thru a proxy, and wing it from there? I hate to say it, but this might have to be an improv game. Lay out the Laird's plan and his army, lay out the Mind Flayers conclave, and then turn the players loose.

Rode that one right off the rails, didn't I?

Existential designers crisis...

Hey, happy gaming anyway!

Return to the Barrier Peaks

Well.. Hello there.

   About a week ago, I posted about advancing the adventure Expedition to the Barrier Peaks 150 years into the future. I have answered some of the questions, others answers have been maddingly elusive...
While answering those questions, 3 possible storylines have presented themselves, and here they are.

#1: The Liard of the Valley of the Mage learned of the ship and has cleared it out and is utilizing the technology he discovered on board to create an army. The army will be Half-Clockwork Gnomes, magically animated clockwork skeletons of the long dead crew, and magically animated robots. He has moved into the ship and has been making it his new fortress.

#2: The Illithid on the ship did indeed survive. He managed to call the conclave from which he was taken. The conclave sent a Spelljammer ship to his location, and they started a new conclave with Mother Brain. I'm kinda partial to this one, as Illithids are some of my favorite monsters. Lots of potential for this one, though it will end up being a very high level campaign.

#3: The distress call was answered. Another ship has arrived and attempted a rescue. The new ship also suffered damage from the black hole transit, and is crashed a short distance away. This one will probably get converted into a Traveller adventure. It just seems to be a bit too similar to the original adventure to make it interesting. I dug out some notes I had made a few years ago about turning the original ships' demise into a Traveller adventure. I might start tinkering with that again.

   I've been playing with some other ideas as well. If this sparks anything, run with it. I'd love to hear any game ideas you guys come up with. This is a fun project for me, hopefully it's at least a little interesting for you guys too.

Happy Gaming!

Prophecies & Omens: The Dragon Orbs Prophecy

After writing my contribution to January's RPG Blog carnival, this month's host Tales of a GM commented and asked if I had rewritten the Dragon Orbs Prophecy. Guess what?

I did. During that process I revised the way it would be presented to the players. I have also decided to start tinkering with a campaign designed around it.

Here is the new version.

In the second great age of men and magic, eight signs will be revealed. The signs mark the march of the fates towards another war of Hearts and Armor.

First of the signs will be when the Grey Lord of the North dies without an heir. This will set the barbarians of the Dragon Tribes down the path of the rites of succession.
When the Shamans of the Dragon Tribes sets the royal candidates on the quest to obtain the Dragon Orbs, that marks the second of the signs of the inevitable march to war.
The lands of perpetual shadow has a role to play in the War of Hearts and Armor. Numbered third among the signs will be when the Oerking of the Dragon Rivers Valley falls to blade of a lone dark warrior from the shadow lands.
When the outposts of the northern frontier tell of sighting war parties from the Strange lands the fourth of the signs comes to pass.
Heroes with instinctive powers and legendary ability wage war against the Crellan Masters of Stealth for the welfare of the surrounding lands is the fifth of steps down the path to the next great war of men and their sorcery.
The exodus of the Elven nations across the Bright lands is the sixth fearful foretelling among the eight.
When the dwarf king of the western range, releases the Lord of the Cerulean Depths. The seventh lock is broken and evil shall rise once more to quest for ultimate power.
When eight heroes of worth undertake the summoning of the Dragon council to travel to Teferahnd Kendazhil, our world takes the eighth and final step and is engulfed in the war of Hearts and Armor.


   Instead of having the PCs try and stop the prophecy, I had thought instead to let them go about a normal adventuring career, and introduce the events of the prophecy along the way. This will serve to let the players decide when and if they wish to intervene. It also leaves me with options to run not only the prophecy campaign, but offers the chance to run a war campaign.

   Now the fun part starts. I get to write it. I may run a game again after this. Might have to do it online. The luddite in me is screaming obscenities. Maybe I can find in person players. Don't know, just have to wait and see how I feel when it's closer to being done. Yet another shiney chicken takes up residence in the Horseman's mind coop. Cluckity cluckity...

Happy Gaming!

January RPG blog carnival: Prophecies & Omens

Inspired I was.
   Throughout my many years of gaming, I have written reams of material for the various games I've run. This month's RPG Blog Carnival topic, Prophecies & Omens, hosted by Tales of GM inspired me to dig into my archives and write a post.

   Combing through my archived material, like the crazy old wizard I am, I ran across my very first attempt at a prophecy. Keep in mind, I wrote this close to 30 years ago. This was during my wildly inexperienced first years of being a DM. I wrote the prophecy with every hope of being able to get the PCs to dive in and stop the impending doom. In a stunning, though not very surprising turn of events, the PCs didn't take the hook. I consigned the prophecy I was so proud of to the start of what would become quite a thick file of unrealized game ideas. There it sat, growing ever more yellowed and increasingly tattered from repeated assaults by rampaging kittens. Probably the best thing for it...

The Dragon Orbs prophecy

In this the second great age of men and magic. 3333 cycles after the last wars of men. The sages and seers foretold of the wars that would divide the world as it would be known to men. The omens have been foretold as being eight in number and terrible of purpose. First of the signs of warning is that a great warrior king of the north will die without an heir, forcing the dragon barbarian tribes in to a ritual search for the next bloodline of nobility. The second fearful foretelling states to start the dragon tribes rites of succession, the eight orbs of dragonkind must be held. The shamans of the dragon tribes call forth the hoards to capture the orbs by the candidates of succession. The third of these omens is that the overking of the dragon rivers valley fall under the blade of a lone dark warrior from the land of perpetual shadow. The sighting of war parties from the strange lands by outposts on the northern frontier will be the forth in the numbered steps to the next great war of men and their sorcery. The fifth catalyst to the war of hearts and armor will take the form of an epic battle in the silver city. Wherein heroes of instinctive powers and abilities will make war on the masters of stealth for the welfare of the surrounding lands. The exodus of the elves marks the passing of the sixth prophecy of violence. The dwarf king of the western mountains will fulfill his role in the legends and events, number seven stage of evils quest for ultimate power. When eight heroes of worth undertake the summoning of the dragon council, the eighth and last sign of ages long past and the second great war of men and their magic answer it's calling as well.

   Ya know, that one started off like gangbusters, but I rode it right off the rails. Over the river and through the woods. Right of the reservation. Reading it now, I realize why the PCs didn't take the hook. They didn't understand the prophecy. I don't either now. I'm fairly certain that when I wrote this, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. No wonder the game fizzled. Let it be a lesson to you friends of how NOT to write a game hook.
   So  you've seen my checkered past, let me show a more recent example...

The Bloodrose prophecy

The tainted blood will be redeemed, by pureblood that is yet unseen.

   Short, sweet and to the point, ain't it. By dropping hints, and some overtly obvious clues, I intend to let the PCs know the old gypsy woman in town is the key to this one. She is related to the big bad in the Bloodrose valley, and she is the untainted blood. (She also happens to have a vial of the big bad's blood in a locket) I haven't figured out what exactly the ritual will be, to kill off the big bad. But it will probably have something to do with mixing the blood and using it as a sort of poison to kill him.
   Digging the old one out of the annals of my DM binders for this post, I think I'll take a stab at rewriting the dragon orbs prophecy into something a tad more logical and useable.

   Lets move on to prophets, shall we?

Among the myriad of half formed ideas scrawled on any number of paper scraps, floating around my office. I have a half done strung together series of adventures I call Tiamat's War. This was going to be a campaign length game, wherein the PCs would try and stop Tiamat's followers from taking over the lands of the Wolf and Tiger nomads. Tiamat had already imprisoned Iuz, and was using his country and resources as the staging ground.
   One of the first adventures in the campaign, was to have the PCs consign a prisoner to a private secret prison, deep in a forest. When they get there, they find the prison infested with some tiny psionic creatures that were killing off the inmates. I can't remember the name of the adventure, but I seem to remember downloading it from somewhere. Anyhoo... back on topic. During the course of the adventure the PCs will have rescued a crazy old man. He would rant and rave, be completely insane, and occasionally spew forth a clue as to where to find things. Magical things. I intended to use him to drop clues as to location of the McGuffin of the campaign also. The PCs were going to discover over the course of the campaign that Tiamat had imprisoned Iuz and her cultists were constructing a undead dreadnaught, they were going to be tasked to stop it. If the idea of a crazy old man spouting prophetical ramblings sounds familiar, you've probably read a book called "Tailchaser's Song" one of the side characters in that book is a cat named "eatbugs" rambling and insane, he eventually gets revealed to be a sort of cat god. Good story, I recommend it.
   Wow. While writing this post, I just had an glimmer of an idea. I have and area in my world called the Nemyrothean plains. This huge flat space is a essentially a prison for uppity Liches. I'm thinking of using a character similar to Mako's character Akiro from the first Conan film. I'll have to tinker with it, but he would make a good prophet I think.
   I haven't been very successful with using prophets in any of my games. Mostly because you can never really predict what the PCs are likely to do. Giving them a prophecy invariably focuses them on some small insignificant detail, and you end up throwing most of your hard thought plans out the window. I do have much more success with Oracles.

   In my campaign world, I have a magical book store. The proprietor, a gnome with and oriental accent named Master Ping, can answer any question the PCs have. He isn't the oracle however. Out in front of Master Ping's shop sits a squat, fairly ugly, toad like creature. He sits behind a small table stacked high with books. All the books are for sale. The PCs will not be able to identify the race of the creature, and if they ask him questions he will respond with only "thrug". This is not only the creatures name, but also the only sound he makes. Kind of like a certain body guard from a well known HBO series...
   So, if the PCs ask Thrug a question, he will grab a piece of parchment and scrawl a short cryptic phrase on it and hand it to them. i.e. The Dark Moon is oft overlooked or The Courts of Sunrise are preparing for war. When I thought up Thrug, the object was to let the players determine where they wanted to go. Thrug is an experiment I'm going to try. Let the players write the adventure, just don't let them know they're writing it.

   I've never had much luck with omens either. Either the players didn't pay attention to it or they paid too much attention to it, to the point of distraction. If I were going to use omens, I would probably use pagan omens. Only because I'm more familiar with those than anything else. Blood on the moon, Red sunrises, things like that can add lots of flavor to an otherwise bland game. I can foresee some pitfalls though. you could spook your players into inaction by constantly throwing omens at them. Just as it's ingrained into the dna of a player never to trust any npc, so it will become with omens. I'm inclined to think (at least with the groups I've played with) that if you drop too many omens, they are going to retreat back to the tavern and drink ale until the impending apocalypse arrives.

   Hopefully I've given you something to work with for your game. But if not, I hope I've least entertained you for a few minutes.

Happy Gaming!

The year of the Chicken.

Greetings friends!

   According to the Chinese zodiac, beginning January 28th we enter the year of the Rooster. If you been following along for any length of time, then you will know how susceptible I am to ginormous shiney chickens. WELCOME to the year of the Chicken!
   Listening to the RPG Circus podcast, one of the hosts made an offhand comment about one of my favorite modules from back in the day. S3 Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. He said he would like to see someone advance that module into the future about 150 years and see what happens.
   OH DEAR LORDY! The smallest thing can set me off in a new direction like atoms in a supercollider. That small comment set me off in a direction of no return. I sat in the lobby of the staffing agency, writing notes furiously. So now I've added another project to the queue...

Return to the barrier Peaks. My process is to ask, then answer questions. You probably know this if you've been reading for more than the last coupe of posts. So here is the list of lobby questions...

What it is still alive in the ship?
What technology still works?
has the ships' computer evolved into an AI?
Is it insane?
Has the mage from Valley of the Mage moved in?
Have the vegypigmys run rampant?
With all the magical creatures on board, with them dying, has it created magical fertilizer, making super powered vegypigmys?
Is the ship still covered in a landslide?
Are the power packs drained? (i.e. do you want to give the PCs energy weapons?)
Will there be treasure left from previous adventurers?
Was there an automated distress call when the energy levels on the ship reached critical levels?
Was the distress call answered?
Was the rescue ship disabled in the same way as the as the original ship?
Did the Mind Flayer from the original adventure survive?
Did the Sphynixes from original adventure survive?
Did any of the intelligent creatures from the original ship survive?
What are they like now?
Does the computer have access to magic?

   So there is the initial set of questions. As is my process, this set of questions will generate others, and more after that. Don't ask for a time frame for completion, you know you won't get a solid commitment.
   Basically, I have discovered a new shiney chicken, and if you want to see the results let me know.

Happy Gaming!

Edit: If the ship's computer has access to magic, will it become a god? Nifty... An insane AI god.

The future...

   So, I'm thinking of calling it The Maidens of Spider Mountain. This will be a fairly large dungeon complex, only because I haven't had a better idea yet. I'm still answering questions about the basic story.

   As most of you know, I suffer from a severe case of gamer add. My internal channel flipper is set to "Infinite loop", I can never focus on one thing for long. Still not sure why, but I've learned to live with it. I'm fighting this battle on multiple fronts. You may or may not have noticed I suffer from multiple "writers only" conditions. Random capiTalization SYdrOme., a serious coMma infestation, and a lack of deadline enforcement. These are the major reasons why I will probably never write professionally. Publishers are notoriously stuffy about such things.

   I have The Bloodrose Campaign 100% done, in my head, much like Mozart. It's all here in my noodle. It's getting onto the paper where I fail miserably. Maybe I should just get an old school tape recorder and record it all as a stream of consciousness thing. I don't know how many people would be willing to read such a thing.

   Of course the thought "Does anyone really care" floats through my head at least 22 times a day. Then I remember the first rule of writing... "A Writer writes" Doesn't matter if it's good or bad just fucking write it down.

   I'm beginning to think I'll never get the Bloodrose campaign down on paper. It's there and complete. Just not completely written down anywhere. Maybe I need to run it for players, that might be the impetus I need to get all down on paper.

  

   I have considered, in the past year, running a PBEM game. But the old doubts resurface and eventually I just give up. I don't think I have the temperament to run a game anymore. Probably a good thing as I was not the best GM anyone had ever seen. I do acknowledge my faults. That's the advantage of age. My faults don't eat me alive anymore. I'm not perfect, never have been.

   I have a few hopes for 2017. I hope I can finally get the Bloodrose campaign all down on paper, then onto the blog. (Don't hold yer breath) I hope the new anti-oxidant therapy will help with my MS. (again, don't hold yer breath Horseman) Really hoping I can get the entire Space Fluff story down on paper. I like where it's going, but I don't want to be trite. So I keep steering away from plotlines I've read elsewhere. I want it to be a science fiction story worthy of my father's attention. Trying to stay away from the common tropes that seem to crop up everywhere lately. I hope I can actually play in a tabletop game in the coming year. One I don't end up running. It always comes down to me running a game because everyone wants to just play. I just want to play, so I won't be volunteering anymore. If the game fizzles, the game fizzles. Not my monkey, not my circus. I'll just go find something else.

   Really hoping my depression doesn't interfere with my creativity anymore. This kind of thing can be avoided with proper exercise of discipline and compartmentalization of the bad brainwaves.

 

   Does it make me a bad person that I have no ambition to be published? That's one of those existential questions that has been colliding with my grey matter this year. Not that you, dear reader, really give a flying flatulation, but this is what happens when  you're 3 sheets to the wind and decide to write out your frustrations. Maybe I should have been an old fashioned story teller. I don't know. I have a deplorable excess of over-imagination, and a severe lack of motivation. Not a good combination.

 

   Anyway, I hope all your gaming wishes come true this year. May you slay the dragons holding you back.

 

happy gaming!