My Druid Adventure On Sale

Oakfell Vale, my adventure about mysterious druids in a secluded valley, is on sale now for 20% off - only $7.99. It is 64 pages, and is intended for use with any old-school D&D-like rpg. It includes complete information about NPCs, monsters, and locations, so that it can be run to its fullest.

It was inspired by the stories and reports I saw on 1970s television about practicing 'druids' in various places in the UK, including their annual rites at Stonehenge. The decade of the 70s was fascinated with the unusual and the occult, and these modern day 'druids' were of particular interest. I remember film and pictures of them chanting in processions in the night, conducting their 'secret rites' by torchlight. What was never said during these reports was that what history actually knows about real druids is virtually nothing. This did not stop the enthusiasts of the 19th and 20th centuries from taking it very seriously.

The book is on sale now for the holidays, to help my family with the problems I discussed in my previous post. Even sharing this would be of great help to us.

We Need a Little Help

 It has been a while since I posted here, and I now firmly intend to correct that. I have many things tell about the AD&D 2e game that I ran from 89 to 97. It took place on an imagined southern-hemisphere continent of Middle Earth. But until then, I have something serious that I have to share.

For those of you who might not know, we are Michael and Marta Moscrip. Marta is a special education para pro, working to help children with special needs in our school district succeed in school. I am a writer, focusing mostly on game materials and short stories.

My mom lived happily with us for over a year and a half. Her passing at the end of July threw us into turmoil and devastated our finances due to her lack of life insurance.

Several months ago I applied for disability due to my fibromyalgia. They contacted me recently, and the application is progressing well, but will take a little longer. However we are now two months behind on our rent and our landlord will wait no longer. We hope to be stable again within the next couple of months, but until then we are reaching out to you to help us.

It is not easy asking for help like this, but we have no choice. I pray that it will not change your opinion of who we are. We have loved living in our house. It has been our home. It is where our children grew up. We deeply appreciate any help that you can give. It means everything to us. We love you all.

https://ko-fi.com/michaelmoscrip

You can enter any amount by clicking on the box.

Oakfell Vale Out Now

My long-awaited adventure for old-school D&D and NGR is available now at DriveThru RPG. Here is the link!

Available Here

 Oakfell Vale is a secluded, heavily forested little valley watched over by a temple of druids. Except they don't really watch over it anymore. They have become complacent over the years, and loathe to interfere in the natural life of the vale. Unfortunately, there has been something growing in the vale, a terrible corruption, which is anything but natural. It is up to the players, if they choose to do so, to fire up the druids and do something to stem the tide of corruption before it's too late.

Many thanks to Zzarchov Kowalski for publishing this, and to Chris Huth and Kelvin Green for the art. Also, a big thank you to Dyson Logos for the great work he did with my maps!

by Andrew Domachowski

 I am currently putting the finishing touches on a cyberpunk novella. The protagonist was inspired by the painting to the right. In discussing the character in the story, my wife suggested I think about why it was important for her to be a black Hispanic woman. There is nothing in the plot of the novella which absolutely requires her to be black, or Hispanic, or even a woman, but I think it is this very fact that makes it important that she is.

A few years ago, on Martin Luther King Day, I wrote a short piece about an episode of the original series of Star Trek, The Ultimate Computer, episode 24 of season 2, from 1968. I think it goes a little way toward explaining what I mean by that, and I've reprinted it below.

I watched this episode again today. I watched it specifically because it was today. Mainly, this story is about limiting the extent of computer automation, and how taking risks to achieve things is a vital part of humanity. But beyond that, this episode has something perhaps less obvious to say.

At no point, during the entire episode, is any mention or reference made to the fact that Doctor Daystrom is a black man. He is the most brilliant computer scientist of his time, an unparalleled genius. He is also deeply troubled by his own legacy. He is eventually driven past his breaking point by the events of the story. But all these things are the triumphs and failures, the accolades and problems, of a scientific genius, not of 'a black man'. This character could have been played by any actor. He was played, wonderfully and passionately, by William Marshal. But the colour of his skin made no difference, in any way. He was a scientist. He was a person.

I give great credit to my parents, and to the other family surrounding me in my childhood, that I saw nothing out of the ordinary about this fact. To me, all people looked different. All individuals were unique, and yet all people were the same. We are all people. Differences in culture, language, appearance; all these were fascinating things to be learned about and appreciated. Only later, as I learned about history, and saw in the news the strange and unreasonable ways in which some people regarded such things as skin colour, did I realise how powerful the subtext of this episode was.

Dark Crystal TV Show

Edit: I have changed my mind drastically about this show. I plan on writing a follow-up sometime soon, but after watching the rest of episode 1, I watched the remainder of the series in 1 day. I found it to be excellent.

I tried watching the Dark Crystal tv series. I made it about 25% through the 1st ep. and shut it off. I was surprised to then see huge amounts of critical praise for it .

- The whole background of the world is changed. I suppose it's possible that some kind of 'reveal' would have the tv show background turn out to be some kind of ruse by the skeksis, but I doubt it. The revised history of who the skeksis are is not nearly as interesting, and is just dumb, right off the top. "They're from space!" takes a high concept and turns it into a cheap low-ball.

- The population of the gelflings is segregated into a cheesy 'X number of cities, each with it's own bluntly simplistic character' system, like a video game or a 2000s YA novel. Another hack device.

- One of the last scenes I watched was a fly-through shot of some kind of library or scriptorium. A great deal of screen time was lavished on this space that felt like the set decorators got started on it, but didn't have time to finish. Comparing it with similar classic Henson spaces, it feels positively empty. There was also no point to the very long fly-through, except showing off the created space. This felt very unlike classic Henson and the Dark Crystal, where the awesome environments were there in support of what was going on, rather than being the point in themselves.

- The very last scene I watched was this same sort of thing again. Scene of characters talking about leaving one location and why they were going to a different location. Extended shot of them leaving, showing off creature movement, but nothing else going on. Same, from another angle. Same, from another angle. Same, from another angle. I get you worked really hard on these things, but that does not mean you give them screen time compared to how much time you spent making them. You give them screen time appropriate to the story and what you're getting across. A fail.

Gellarde Barrow

The legends of the mountain-folk are calling. My first small dungeon adventure is up now on Drive Thru RPG. The monsters are statted up for NGR, but they are easily statted for any old school dnd-style game just by interpreting the descriptions. It's pay-what-you-want, so please give it a read! If you like it, you can always go back and buy a copy as well.

Find it here: Gellarde Barrow at DriveThruRPG

What Playing 5th Edition D&D Feels Like To Me

[I specify "to me", because I am not you, so I don't know how it feels to you. It clearly feels pretty good to quite a few people. If it feels great to you, that's awesome. I'm not attacking you, or trying to change your mind.]

[Also, below, "5e" is not in any way a DM. It is the rules system, nothing else. "Me" is myself as a player or DM, either one.]

I need to go through a door into a room where I need to solve a problem. There is a box outside the door with 68 specialised tools all jumbled together. I can take one into the room with me. I rummage through the box and pick a screwdriver, thinking "this seems versatile".

5e: "That's not 'versatile'. That tool is for driving quarter inch flathead screws, little mister, and that's all!"

Me: "Uh.. ok?"

I go in the room, and there are two boards partially nailed together. I need to either finish nailing them together, or separate them. I flip the screwdriver around and start hammering the nail with the handle.

5e: "Whoa down there, tiger! As stated earlier, that's a screwdriver, not a hammer. You need to turn that back around and hold it by the handle."

I turn the screwdriver back around, and start using it to pry the two boards apart.

5e: "Hey now! No can do, MacGuyver. That screwdriver is for driving screws. I mean, it's right there in the name, see? You had plenty of opportunity on the other side of the door to pick a hammer or a crowbar, but you chose the screwdriver."

I try to put the screwdriver through my head. It does not work, because my head is not a screw.

Me: "Screw you, 5e."

Why They Put Trails Through Forests

So, with Win10 they send me pictures every few days. Some of them are pretty great.

This one is a perfect example of somewhere your DnD character does NOT want to take their horse. Not just riding, but you don't want to try to walk it through there either. All those holes and shadows that look like holes will all look like holes to your horse, and even if your horse is trained so they won't freak out in a forest (they freak out in forests because, basically, they have one eye on each side of their head) they might baulk at going anywhere near them. The other possibility (the worse one) is that they try to jump over them onto what they think is solid ground, but almost certainly isn't, at which point they will almost assuredly break either their ankle or their leg.

"That doesn't look so bad" - someone who doesn't ride horses

If your character is looking at this, and they have a horse, they'll have to either find a way around or take their horse back and leave it somewhere. Unless neither the player nor the character have any experience with horses (this is pretty basic), in which case they can try to make their horse (not them) roll a wisdom save (determination) to go through it, and then a dexterity save to not break at least one leg (based on how badly they failed the save). The horse is going to have to keep making that dex save. How often depends on the ground, but potentially as often as every 5 minutes.

In The Mouth of Madness

This is the passage Sam Neill reads as the walls of the world tear open, and he watches Elder Horrors rush toward reality. I mostly put this here so I won't lose it.

In The Mouth of Madness
“Trent stood at the edge of the rip; stared into the illimitable gulf of the unknown, the Stygian world yawning blackly beyond. Trent's eyes refused to close. He did not shriek, but the hideous unholy abominations shrieked for him, as in the same second he saw them spill and tumble upward out of an enormous carrion black pit choked with the gleaming white bones of countless unhallowed centuries. He began to back away from the rip as the army of unspeakable figures, twilit by the glow from the bottomless pit, came pouring at him toward our world.”

Corken for the Holidays!

From Norchester down past Biggleswade, and throughout most of East Anglia, the wild corken is a favourite addition for every family’s Holiday table. It’s easiest to find them near rivers and lakes, and the best hunting is from early September to mid October.

cobaltplasma.deviantart.com

Corken: 1-2 HD, AC as leather, grab with tentacles for 1d4 crushing damage. If grabbed, automatically stab with legs next round for 1d4 damage. Tentacles only do damage on the round they hit, as they first tighten their grip and latch on. Small targets are immobilised by these grasping tentacles, but human-sized victims are basically unhindered. However, they will only be able to attack the Corken with small weapons, since it is STUCK RIGHT TO THEIR FREEXIN BODY!

Corken have no eyes or ears, instead using their extremely powerful and minutely discerning sense of smell. They smell with the suckered surface of their large tentacles, so if the tentacles are removed somehow, they will wander around aimlessly for a while, then give up on life and just sit down.

The traditional old-fashioned preparation of the Holiday Corken is on the left. On the right is the more recent style, where the tentacles have been removed and prepared separately, usually as a fried treat as well as an ingredient in other dishes. A few people in larger cities, such as Cooperton or Frippert, now put tentacle in the stuffing, but this is frowned on by all but the middle and upper classes.

Also, upon doing an image search to see who had done that top pic that had been sitting in my drive forever, I discovered somebody else had made a different (though obviously similar) creature for 5e. Here is their blog/campaign diary: skaldforge.wordpress.com. And here I thought I was the only one this odd. Well, not really.

Stupid Monk Tricks

If you have monks in your DnD game, here is a Stupid Monk Rule! The idea is that it’s a self-contained add-on ability that balances itself internally, so there should be no need to restrict it by level, etc.

Combat Balance, or Karma Strain, or Chi Balance, or whatever funky monk name you want to call it.

When the monk does damage in a fight, they can arbitrarily add bonus points to their damage. But! They must achieve b a l a n c e. During the fight they have to apply an equal amount of MINUS POINTS to their damage. If they don’t, then a turn later they will take that many D6s in damage to themselves, as their muscles pop and snap from the strain. If someone casts something like Lesser Restoration on the monk before the turn is up, this will quiet their muscles and they won’t take the damage, but the monk will still have Failed to Achieve Balance (covered later). Something like a Cure Wounds spell won’t help at all, though it will have its normal effect on the damage after the monk’s muscles have snapped.
Let’s Have an Example!
Jovaell the Monk is in a fight again! She hits Bandit Leader for 3 points of damage, and is deeply unfulfilled. She is a professional, so she knows this hit is wimply, and decides to DRIVE HER IRON WILL INTO HIS BODY! She adds.. Hmm.. 7 points! Yes, she feels that’s prudent, and adds 7, doing 10 all together. Bandit Leader falls to the ground, the victim, ultimately, of his own poor life choices.
But now Jovaell must achieve BALANCE!
She strikes Lackey X, and hits, doing 4 points of damage. She subtracts 3 from that, doing a total of 1 point. She MUST do at least one point of damage with the hit, or she can achieve no balance with it. 7-3=4. She still has 4 points of her earlier bonus damage she needs to make up for before she has achieved balance.
To her dismay, Lackey X drops in front of her, the victim of Nabonidas the Assassin. He seems pleased with himself.

Jovaell the Monk, in case you forgot

She looks around quickly, and sees one last opponent still stands. She hits Lackey Q and rolls 9 points of damage! She wants to take 4 from the 9 she did, and kick the poor sod for 5 points. Sadly, he had taken an arrow to the knee earlier, and only has 2 hit points left. She drops him, and applies those 2 points to her … Chi Strain? Muscle Balance? Whatever you want to call it. Regardless, she now has 2 points left, and the fight is over. If she still has those 2 points a turn later, she will take 2d6 damage to herself, probably with her muscles writhing under her skin in disturbing anime fashion (that’s up to you). 1d6 damage for each point, see?
She now has a few options. Her friend Cormac the druid is senile, and has nothing like a restoration spell prepared. She sees a nearby goat. She has never liked goats. Not since the Goat Incident. She hits the goat and rolls an exciting 6 points of damage! Unfortunately for everyone concerned, it was an Old Goat, and had but one hit point to give up. To achieve any balance, the goat would have to take at least 1hp in damage anyway, so she still has 2 points of Chi Strain (or whatever) to unload, even though the goat shatters like a chair in a bar fight from that 6.
She will hit Nabonidas. She will make it up to him later, and he probably deserves it anyway. Assassin, amiright?
She cracks him a good one for 5 points, subtracts the 2 that was building up dangerously, hurting him for a total of 3pts, and has ZEROED OUT HER YANG WITH HER YIN! YAY!
BUT!
She Failed To Achieve Balance during the fight. She has avoided physical damage, but her Inner Calm (or something) pays the price. She gets no combat xp from that fight. Or maybe just half. Up to your DM.

Sigh.

My KotOR Characters. Of Course.

I'm experiencing some pretty serious DnD burnout.

I love spending time with my friends, and I love the fantastic worlds that I get to visit. A majority of my problem, I think, is the long-running basic assumption that DnD characters are largely greedy self-serving bastards. Having this as a core premise has always been a downer for me. Even though it can be amusing from time to time, the constant exposure to this paradigm has, I think, really worn me down.

I remember trying to play Dark Side in KotOR for a while, and it didn't last long at all. I laughed a couple times, but got bored with it quickly. It made the game dreary and unfun for me.

I tried to play Renegade Shepard in Mass Effect 2. Again, a few laughs. When the crew had concerns about spacing Grunt if he went crazy, and Shepard just shrugged and grinned after making a point about having extra crewmembers, I thought it was hilarious. But I stopped playing that save and went back to my paragon version soon after. I didn't like Bad Shep, and didn't care what happened to him. Playing him felt like a tedious chore.

I tried playing a Skyrim character who broke laws, went to jail, killed innocuous bystanders, etc. Same result. Lame. Quit playing that one before level 15. When my son was playing and decided to get turned into a vampire and eat people at Vampire Castle, I tried to keep watching, but lost all interest.

I know all these examples are from video games, and involve me trying to play 'the bad guy' rather than being enmired in their midst, but I guess my point is it's just not in me. It's not fun for me. Rather than getting any emotional relief from parodying or lampooning assholes by being an asshole, I get my relief by smashing the assholes. I'm kind of afraid that this means I'm simple or naive, but I can’t deny that it all adds up to me beginning to experience my chosen hobby as another source of depression rather than a refuge from it.

Anglian Religion and World View - Airtha, Fairwhus

Few in mainstream Anglian society dispute Odin and Frigga and their family, or the kinship of the Æsir and the Vanir. They take for granted that these individuals exist as (divine and different) flesh and blood, and that they live in a place called Asgard. To assume much more than that in public company is often seen as becoming a bit too familiar. Even referring to whether Asgard lies in some other nigh-inaccessible place, or is located in an as-yet undiscovered region of the same world on which Anglia rests can be a matter of deep contention. The reasons for this are somewhat complex.

A different group of travellers meets elves

The official position of the Imperial Church is that when Theodoric the Elder first stepped through the Imperceived Door to this world, he had left Midgard and set foot on Ælfheim. This was self-evident to Theodoric, since he almost immediately met the elves. He declared to all those of his kin travelling with him that they had arrived in Ælfheim, and indicated this with a sweeping gesture. This sweeping gesture, the Church maintains, marked the entire world on which he now stood. Even these early people were comfortable with the concept of what we would now call a “planet,” or “fairwhus” to them, though it’s unclear whether they brought this understanding with them or gained it from the elves.

Fairly early on in the history of what would become Theodoric’s kingdom, and then empire, in this new realm, his people encountered coastlines and seas, as one eventually does after walking far enough. As travelling and exploration was the current wont of these fourth century Germanic expatriates, they ventured forth to nearby islands and other coastlines. Now they had a quandary. Did Ælfheim stop at the cold shingle beach they had left? Standing on an island or some further shore, were they still standing on Ælfheim, or were they standing somewhere new? If it was somewhere new, where was it?

Map of Yggdrasil - Tina Solstrand
solaroid.deviantart.com

Those who said “yes, this is somewhere new” took their cue from Theodoric and selected from the other worlds of their cosmology: Vanaheim, Niflheim, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, and Svartalfheim. They “knew” they hadn’t found Asgard or Hel, and also hadn’t gone back to Midgard. “Svartalfheim” is yet to be applied to a land here. A few felt that names like Útgarðar and Niðavellir must refer to unique places, rather than being other names for places like Jotunheim and Svartalfheim, since after a while it became clear there were more lands than a mere five names would cover.

Admittedly, there was some advantage to this. Theodoric had specifically claimed all of “Ælfheim” as his.


As more diverse members of what the Romans had called “The Germanic Tribes” continued to find their way to this other place, some even rejected the notion that they had ever left Midgard at all.


And with that, we have the current spectrum covering most opinion. At one extreme, “it’s all just more Europe” and at the other extreme, “every new landmass here is a different one of the nine worlds.” Some are even certain that one could sail to Asgard or Hel; they just haven’t been found yet. The most common view throughout the Empire, and in Anglia as well, is that:

• This is indeed not Midgard. 
• Neither Asgard nor Hel reside upon this sphere. 
• The six more earthly homelands of legend (Ælfheim, Vanaheim, Niflheim, Jotunheim, Muspelheim, and Svartalfheim) are in fact merely different continents on this world.

The third point is deep heresy in the eyes of the Church, and can land one in deep trouble back in the Old Empire if bandied about publicly. Interestingly, although still technically heresy, the Church in Anglia tends to overlook this. Anglia, of course, happens to rest on a continent explorers named Jotunheim.

NPC Parties

One of the most dreaded results on the random encounter table is the NPC party. Not for the players, but for me when I’m GM’ing. I am suddenly responsible for randomly rolling five or more characters right in the middle of a game. The best solution I’ve found, for wilderness encounter tables, is to pre-generate several NPC parties, and then randomly determine which one is met.

Nabonidas of Akhdar

Not every dungeon has an NPC party but some should, unless the GM has determined that the players are pretty much the only adventurers in the area. For dungeon encounters, it makes more sense for me to pregenerate one or possibly two parties of NPCs for that specific dungeon. Then they can appear by name on random encounter tables for dungeon levels appropriate to their abilities, or more rarely on other levels where they’re either passing through or in over their heads. You can also roll a check (1 in 20 works well) to have them be in a room the players are about to enter.

Below is a party of NPCs that I used in a slightly different way. I placed them in one of the rooms of the Temple Catacombs under the ruined temple at the corner of Castle Nicodemus. But then I put one member of their party on the random encounter chart for the Catacombs. That way they might run into him first (chasing a polymorphed but defeated green slaad), giving the players the opportunity to interact with him, trace his steps back to the rest of the NPC party, or some combination of the two (or ignore him altogether, of course). The players also might run into the main body of the NPC party first, thus hearing about their recent defeat of a green slaad who bolted and ran rather than giving over the soul gem embedded in its forehead. The players could then choose to interact with the NPC party, help them track down their “ranger” who chased off after the slaad, try to avoid them, attack them for their loot, or anything else the players might think of. (You might recognise the ranger, the green slaad polymorphed into a raven, and his party of companions. If you do, please let me know in the comments or on G+. The basic idea for them, though not their party composition, is lifted from some old pre-WOTC TSR product, but I can’t remember which one.)

The first question I addressed about them was “why are they there?” I decided they were a professional treasure hunting company hired to find a specific item. In addition to providing some variety from the usual simple lust for loot, this choice also snuck in some incidental information about the campaign world. Anglia and other nearby kingdoms and locales are rich enough in ruins to support a professional company of delvers. The ruins are known to hold highly valuable or powerful items, widely enough that multiple patrons would seek to hire delvers. The ruins are known to be dangerous; dangerous enough to warrant hiring professionals instead of delving on one’s own.

Another factor I consider when putting a party of NPCs into a dungeon is time. Just how long are they going to be in there? There’s obviously a limit (unless the dungeon is big enough to get lost in), but until the players have some clue they are down there, there probably isn’t any reason to start their clock ticking. For this party, the clock started when the players found their tracks heading down into the Temple Catacombs entrance. After that, they would be leaving the dungeon after a maximum of 1d10+14 days. (If I was stopping time between game sessions, I probably would have made that quite a bit less.) I had them camp in the temple ruins just above, but if the Catacombs had been larger I would probably have had them hole up in an empty room down below. Being professionals, they were fastidious campers who left no glaring evidence. Each day a game session occurred, they had a chance to notice the players, modified by how close the players got to the ruined temple, or how loud and obvious the players’ characters became.

The last question I wanted to answer before they encountered players was “how will they act toward another group of adventurers?” Even though I knew I wanted to come up with one or two basic character traits for each member, I wanted an overall party MO as well. Although their alignments differ individually, on the whole they will work toward good ends, beneficent to most of society and the innocent, and will do their best to limit the amount of chaos caused (or Chaos unleashed) in getting there. Being professionals working on a contract, they will do their best not to reveal their current employer, or what they’ve been hired to retrieve. If they can “foil some evil” without risking their contract, they’ll do it.

Jovaell the Monk

Now it was time for the individuals. The foundation here is that they are not player-characters. Just as I don’t allow players to choose “wyvern” or “bugbear” or “king” for their class, other things players can’t choose are open to NPCs. In essence they are all “monsters,” just like the Druids found in the monster section of the original 3 little brown books of OD&D. Thus, for players “ranger” is just a varied combination of background skill (e.g. the Secondary Skills table, page 12 of the 1e DMG) and flavour, potentially applied to several different character classes. However, for the NPC in this party “ranger” is what type of “monster” he is. He possesses and uses special abilities in the same way any other “monster” does. Since I had chosen an “off-standard” class to base this NPC on, I decided it would be amusing to do that for the other members of the NPC party as well. Thus: assassin, druid, monk, illusionist. 

The next big consideration for the individuals is what their hit dice should be. Again since I knew they were professionals, I decided they would have researched the item they’re after and its location as much as possible. Therefore, they’d be unlikely to be in over their heads in the Temple Catacombs. Other monsters down there included wights, wraiths, several areas where glyphs are set up to summon red slaad, a medusa, and at least one summoned green slaad. 6 to 8 hit dice (9 for the leader) sounded about right, while still making it difficult enough for them to progress so that they wouldn’t end up clearing the dungeon instead of the players. This would also determine things like their available spells and other special abilities.

• Darius Ravenwood, Ranger, 8hd. Jovial and boastful, which interferes with keeping contracts confidential.
• Nabonidas, Assassin, 7hd. Soft-spoken, pleased with himself. The “common peoples’” antics amuse him.
• Tasha, Elf Illusionist, 9hd. The Company Leader. Friendly, but all-business underneath.
• Jovaell, Monk, 6hd. Quiet and introspective. Hard to tell if she’s observing or meditating.
• Cormac O’ Connacht, Druid, 7hd. Old and sort of senile. Prone to confusion and revealing secrets.

I’ll give more details about some of these NPCs later on, as at least one has another function in Anglia. Tasha is one of several possible mentor choices for 1st level magic-users.

News from Castle Nicodemus

In the year and a half (!) since we last looked in on events in the area around Castle Nicodemus (a pre-empted siege attempt by a company of five score orcs), a mere 3 months have passed in Anglia. All agree the chronological flux between Anglia and Europe has become increasingly more erratic. From Migellito’s point of view, his caravan has returned to “the fields he does not know” every 2 weeks, consistently, over what he and other caravan stalwarts claim to be more than a year and a half. However, to those who have become regular residents of Renard’s Folly and The Blue Rabbit it is sometimes only a day or two between visits from the caravan, and sometimes as much as a month, with none involved being able to puzzle out any sort of pattern.

Winter is solidly entrenched in the Anglish countryside, with leafless woods, clear cold skies, and snow-blanketed fields only occasionally punctuated by patches of brown grass. The first sabbat appropriate for placating Dagon down in the fens of Blackmarch to “benevolently” allow conversion to Tsathoggua has long passed, but another approaches in early February, only a couple months away.

The traditional Anglish corken roast

Visits from the nearby subterranean refugee village of Underbridge have slackened considerably, recently. This is not to the liking of most of the mercenaries, since the occasional home-cooked enticemen.. er.. meal had become a welcome counterpoint to “more supplies from Europe.” During what was usually harvest-time for the locals (fouled this year by the orc occupation) most of the men even warmed quickly to the oddity of “roast corken,” an animal which brings to mind equally the qualities of both large pheasants and large marine crabs. Some scouting reports in the direction of Bridgewater (the above-ground village from which the refugees fled, built almost directly over Underbridge) say the orcish military occupation forces may have dwindled to the lower end of their usual range of 30 to 300.

In Castle News, Cadogan Dee, mercenary footman, languishes in one of the Renard’s Folly jail cells, suspected of the murders of other mercenaries Niels Noorlander, Helmut the Saxon, and Harbrecht of Utrecht. Found cowering in the cold shelter of a rubble pile near the Castle edifice dubbed “The Great Laboratory,” Dee still claims “I don’t remember anything!” The Dutch contingent is particularly doubtful of his innocence, owing in no small part to the blood on Dee’s lips when found holding Harbrecht’s severed hand.

My Known World - Western Half

Here's a map of the Western half of the known area of my "Ruins of the Morvalian Empire" game world.

Prepared in the Tavern at Castle Nicodemus by Willyd "Patchy" Nilsson, to the best of his recollection. He affirms that Niflheim is very cold, Alfheim is farther away than it looks, the Helic Ocean is full of bad deadly things, Regnenwald is what the Akhdarans call a "jungle," and that is just wax right there.

The country stretching from Freeport in the South to Norchester in the North, and from Blackmarch in the West to Æden's Bight on the East is the Kingdom of Anglia. Æden's Bight, by the way, is the name of the waters around Inverland.

Anglia was the part of Jotunheim settled by the Anglish around two centuries ago, after they fled the highly oppressive Saxon rule of Westsaxia. Of course, the King of Anglia owes allegiance to The Grand Theodic Empire, but at two months just to reach the shore of Alfheim and a further 2 to 3 weeks to reach the seat of the Empire, the real effect is largely formality.

How Bugbears are Born

Let's join the life cycle of the bugbear with our little friend, the goblin. Goblin children, about the age where human children might be called toddlers, are notorious for getting into places and situations away from their parents. They are also notorious for being horrifically violent, cruel (as in physically cruel) and deceptive, but that's not important right now.

In some areas near where goblins dwell, the little goblins sometimes find themselves (either by misadventure or design) in proximity to a certain breed of enormous semi-translucent spiders.

Sort of, but 8 feet long and way more gross.

The little goblins are bitten, envenomed, and swallowed whole by these spiders, which have big sacs, one sac per spider, inside their abdomen. The little goblins languish comatose in the spider’s translucent abdomen as they slowly transmogrify into full-size bugbears. As they grow, they gradually take over the spider’s body, slowly killing it as their limbs squeeze out into the four rear legs of the spider, expanding the girth of the legs and forcing them to moult aggressively.

In the final stage of the process the spider takes on a centaur-like existence, with the bugbear occupied abdomen (with their head in part of the thorax) acting as the horizontal motive portion, and the rest of the spider vertically upright, it’s non-bugbear-filled front legs flailing in pain as it continues to search for sustenance to feed the growing bugbear within. Finally, the fully grown bugbear bursts from the still-living spider, killing it. The bugbear will, over time, produce spider eggs about the size of green grapes. These eggs generate in glands analogous to a dog or skunk’s scent glands. You can probably guess where these nasty, slimy, translucent eggs can then be found, and what the hatchlings' diet consists of.

Character for Marvel '78

After reading the latest post on Rogues and Reavers about Marvel '78, I got all excited about coming up with an original character concept. The tone is late-century Eastern urban decay, so my head stirred up Welcome Back Kotter, Fritz the Cat, Barney Miller and Wolfen. This is what came out.

During the day, Fritz Epstein is a mild mannered pharmacist's assistant at a small drugstore in Brooklyn. When the doors are locked and the chores are done, he looks over his shoulder and makes sure the place is empty. He ranges up and down the shelves behind the counter in back, popping a pill cocktail that brings about his transformation into...

The Cat!

He's cool. He's smooth. He's covered with fur. The sunglasses he dons aren't just for the ladies. His cat-vision eyes need shade from the dirty lights of a hot New York City night. He doesn't just fight the criminals who take advantage of the people, like the Junkyard Dog. No, he also fights The Man. He's not just one color, baby - he's full-on calico!

Niflheim and The Spike

If you go far enough south, you hit the ship-breaking ice, and in beyond it is Niflheim. Now, if you find the right spot, you can find what they call The Spire or The Spike. It's like a great mix of a tower and a mountain peak, but it's taller, hundreds of feet, than any tower made by manskind. But it's no more than a chain across, not like any natural mountain you've ever seen either. The Spike sits right at or just past the edge of the ice, and then a great long spit of rock knifes off South for leagues and leagues til it hits Niflheim proper. Some call that spit of land The Spear.

That's the only way to get into that cold land down there. Whoever controls The Spike controls Niflheim. Unless you've got the gold to build an icesailing ship, but I've never seen one of them. I've heard tell that long ago the elves used to build them, but what the elves had to do in Niflheim no one knows.

[Willyd Nilsson, A.I. 811]

Chance and Timing of Wilderness Encounters

This is basically the system I used to use for rolling wilderness encounters back in the day, but I've updated it a bit. It assumes the DM is going to check the chance of an encounter based on the passage of time, not based on distance traveled. That's how it is in the dungeon, and that's how I've always preferred to do it.

Columns
Instead of using arbitrary units like hours or days, this system divides time into more natural sections based on sunrise, sunset, and the typical activity cycle of creatures outdoors. If your world has 2 suns or 60 hour days or other vastly different time schemes, just alter the column titles as appropriate, or add or remove whatever columns you need to make it work.

Rows
As far as the rows are concerned, you just need to have one for each encounter table (the thing that lists the actual monsters) that you've made.

"Aww jeeeez, this looks so complicated!" Bah, whinger! The idea is to make it as quick as possible while playing; to give the DM a rich answer to the question "does anything happen?" using as little dice rolling as possible. Then the DM rolls on their list of monsters/events/etc. for that area.

Result = No. of encounters for that period. Less than zero = zero.

	Dawn	Morning	Afternoon	Twilight	Evening	Night
Plains	2d6-9	2d6-10	2d6-10	2d6-9	2d6-10	2d6-10
Forest	2d6-10	2d6-9	2d6-10	2d6-8	2d6-9	2d6-8
Desert	2d6-10	2d6-11	-	2d6-11	2d6-10	2d6-9
Etc.

2d6-9 gives the following percentages:

0: 83.3%

1: 8.33%

2: 5.56%

3: 2.78%

This means the overall chance of at least some kind of encounter is 16.67%, or the same as 1 in 6 on a d6. For 2d6-10, this chance is the same as rolling a 1 on a d12. For 2d6-11, this chance is 1 in 36.

When during the listed period does a rolled encounter occur? There are 2 main options:

1 - The DM rolls a single d6, with higher results indicating progressively further into the time period. If more than one encounter has the same result, they happen at roughly the same time.

2 - The DM decides how many hours are in each time period, then rolls randomly for hours and minutes. If the DM has a detailed calendar, the number of hours in each period may depend on the season.

The same 2d6 roll can be used to determine non-encounter events at the same time. If the roll on the above encounter table results in doubles, the DM would then roll on an event table. This allows for the chance of monster encounters to be different than the chance for events. For any area or situation, the DM can decide the chance of an event based on the desired probability below:

double 1: 2.8%

double 1 or 2: 5.6%

double 1 through 3: 8.3% or 1 in 12

double 1 through 4: 11% or 1 in 9

double 1 through 5: 13.8%

double 1 through 6: 16.7% or 1 in 6

As an example, if 2d6-9 is used for encounter chance, and an event is rolled on any double result, the overall chance of something happening is 1 in 3. Half would be encounters and half would be events. If instead 2d6-11 is used for encounter chance, and events are rolled on a result of either double ones or double twos, the overall chance of something happening is 1 in 12, with events being twice as likely as encounters.