16 years ago on a summer’s day in upstate New York, we were playing a crazy high-fantasy hack of Ars Magica. We called it Ars AD&Dica. Jason was talking in-character about steeds with another player-character and he said, “There’s no steed I’d rather have under me in battle than a Balduvian War-Pig!”

For whatever reason it stuck in my head and I still remember it to this day.

Here’s to the Balduvian War Pigs, the little details and conversations that came up during games in between the face-stabbing, demon-summoning and calling upon lightning. Here’s to the little moments in fantasy-lands with friends.

Feel free to share your own Balduvian War Pigs in the comments.

Session Summary

The group is headed towards Big Shire, hoping to sell the location of Deadshire, an ancient and deserted hobbit shire, to well-to-do halflings in their most metropolitan settlement. On the way they ran across The Monastery of Dor Amon and stopped to sell the books they had stolen from a dwarven caravan last game.

Gorgolog leafed through the Axe Bible, written by the Saint of Axes. Turns out the Saint was a knight who tossed aside his blade, threw off his spurs and beheaded his king, traveling the land to become an axe-wielding bad-ass. Once the orc heard he was human, he lost interest. Orc are finicky readers.

The Githzarai monks were treated to a display of wrestling entertainment as Gorgolog and the Drow/Acolyte Monk, Saav, put on a display of martial prowess. Traditional orc rules say that when the loser is thrown from the circle, they are fed to dogs but since we didn’t have dogs, we’d have to change the stakes a bit. Then Gorgolog took on the monastery’s martial arts instructor, Master of the Thoughtful Fist and lost to her in two punches, both delivered in the first round. Githzarai are NASTY. A total of 3d8 damage from each punch and the ability to throw two in a round. 2d8 of that damage is Psychic damage. Ouch! It is CR 2…hmmm, are the CR’s broken?

It was all in good fun and Gorgolog got up and rocked out like a solid wrestler, leveraging Bret’s passion for sports entertainment.

They traded this night of entertainment for 24 hours of access in the library. I had their Drow/Rogue/Scholar, Fal’ethon. She got 3 questions and rolled appropriate skills for each. She had an advantage die because she had the scholar they rescued from the Ghoul Knight in our first game, who is now traveling with the party. Laura made a roll to convince Yon, the scholar, to change her thesis to be about the underground and its denizens.

Things they learned:

• The 12 above-ground cities and the basics of what has happened with them in the past 1000 years. Very basic. I’ll draw a map for the next game.
• The elven aristocracy has left the planet, leaving behind elven thieves and scoundrels. They grew ships from seeds and took to the stars.
• The big money on this continent is run by the city-state, Vault, owned by a dwarven merchant house.

Next game we will continue to head towards Big Shire, hoping to sell the information of the Deadshire’s whereabouts and then perhaps set off for Vault to make some Big Money from the economic nexus.

Session Thoughts

I’m having a great time, though two hour sessions are rough. It felt slow and it felt like not everyone in the 5 person party got to make a meaningful decision this session, not everyone got to roll dice, which vexes me.

I’m wondering if I’m peppering my hexcrawl map with enough delving and door kicking opportunities. I’m going to go over my map a bit in the week between games and just think it over.

5e Thoughts

Advantage dice and Disadvantage dice are a really neat tool. I can’t get enough of them and I’ve been a fan of them since I first saw them in Whitehack.

Backgrounds are a great way to ground the party in the real world and connect to the setting. I have to be careful because these characters are all from deep underground and so they aren’t linked to the above-ground at all. I still want them to be able to connect to the world through their Backgrounds when it makes sense.

I was mindful of this when Bret proposed trading expensive library access for a wrestling exhibition. I could’ve said that the monks were too staid and not into it but I took his background into account and made the more-fun decision, that kung-fu monk/scribes from another dimension would love to watch an orc kick ass and/or get his ass kicked, allowing the group to party with the monks, drink terrible beer from the Astral Plane and just have a fun night. They never delved into the deeper secrets of the place and that is fine. They got what they wanted. Onward to Big Shire with Hobbit crimelords and sherrifs.

Reading: The Wheel of Time grind continues. I’m on Book 4. I’ll likely take a break next week when Richard K. Morgan’s new one comes out next week. Also, check out this blog post by Emily.

Planning: No Swordlords this weekend. :( D&D tonight, getting my Tiefling on.

Writing: Random Encounter Tables for the D&D group’s trip to Big Shire and to-do lists for work.

And you?

Zaheer is the best villain the Legend of Korra has ever put together. 

He looks cool.

He goes too far but he also has a point.

He leads a team of total bad-asses. You can feel their shared history when they are on the screen together.

And he is voiced by:

Reading: I put down The Shadow Rising and picked up The Dark Defiles. Morgan’s book just came out and I’m enjoying it. Wheel of Time was driving me crazy with its meaningless trolloc fights, like something out of a poorly D&D game, combats for the sake of action with nothing at stake and nothing interesting about the characters uncovered. My Wheel of Time finish sprint might have lost its steam.

Planning: Two days off this weekend! I’m planning a secret-fun Saturday with the lady-friend and on Monday the buddies be playtesting Space Cops in the Spinward, a Green Lantern-inspired Dogs in the Vineyard hack.

Writing: Choose your own Adventure with G+ polls! Here’s the most recent chapter in which the High Warden of the Matronsguard has a big decision to make in the barren crater gardens of the Moon God.

And you?

I’m having a stupid amount of fun writing this up, always trying to write up choices that are all interesting. My goal is to have the votes be as close as possible, even better if folks are invested and interested in the outcome. It isn’t gaming but it feels like some kind of odd isolation exercise that prepares one for a specific part of gaming, like doing deadlifts to prepare for playing football.

Chapter 1

(NOTE: This first chapter was published under a private circle, the rest have been public.)

In which the Drow empress and her displacer beasts hunt the lycanthrope-infected last human…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Chapter 2

In which the High Warden of the Matronsguard attempts to avenge her Empress…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Chapter 3

In which a newly ascended goddess of were-displacer beasts marries her archangel…

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

I left the holdfast when I was a young man, grog still stuck in my beard and my grandmother’s axe on my back. I reckoned I’d come back and take over the family business once I’d had a taste of the world.

Thing is, I like how the outside world tastes. I like the evening company of leggy women and sinewy men. I enjoy mulled wine and tea. Dwarves have it right on goat stew and mushrooms, no one else comes close to my dad’s recipe on that and I can feed a city block with a stout goat if I do it his way.

I trim my beard and study fencing. My brothers would give me such shite over it. I can’t even tell ya.

Reading: I just finished Wool and The Martian. After reading a few essays and articles, I’m picking up Anathem again for another go.

Planning: A 3 day weekend of getting my life and apartment in order. Yay!

Writing/Creating: Too much notebook, not enough keyboard.

And you?

Reading: I finished Anathem and liked it quite a bit but didn’t love it as much as I thought I was going to.

Now I’m going back and forth between Audrey (cow): An Oral Account of A Most Daring Escape, Based More or Less on A True Story and Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City’s Most Unwanted Inhabitants.

Planning: Gaming, Invicta FC, UFC, gluten-free pizza, cider and BJJ on Sunday.

Writing: This deserves its own post.

And you?

I’m reading Dungeon Crawl Classics, preparing to take on the role of Judge this Sunday.  I really like the modules, love how compact they are. 20 or so pages feels like the most I’d want an adventure to be and their form factor is just right. DCC has me thinking up first adventure 0-level funnel ideas, situations where people first set aside their place in the world, their born vocations in order to deal with the chaos, sorcery, blood and maybe glory that can be found in adventuring.

9 Gates

The adventure is about the party getting through the dangerous shanty town outside the city’s walls. They hope to get in to the city proper through one of its well guarded gates, set their previous vocations aside and join a warriors’, wizards’ or thieves’ guild.

True Monsters

Tax collectors, expecting no trouble this far from the 100 Dukes’ War, are coming to take the town’s grain storage, leaving the party’s village all to starve.

The Greedy and the Dead

The caravan the players are traveling with is in shambles after bandits were driven off in the night but the greedy bastards will be back once night falls on this oasis; the morning light is showing a pyramid that no one had noticed before.

Between Starvation and the Snake God

In which a dangerous cult takes root during a long siege as starvation causes desperation.

Wizard’s Wake

The town’s local hedge wizard dies, face down in his own vomit, but not before mumbling something about his former adventuring band will be back to take what he owes them from his tower, his mausoleum and the town he calls home.

I need to take a look at punitive delving again.

Reading: I’m caught between a bunch of books. A book about a rat, a book about a cow and a game about Night Witches. On the train I’m re-reading the second book of Fafrd and the Grey Mouser. I’m thinking about books concerning prison for a gaming idea.

Planning: Gaming tonight! This weekend will be about vacation planning and laundry. Exciting.

Writing: This and that, I’ll be more specific next week.

And you?

Keith posts these fun retrospectives about Dragon magazine on G+ and the latest one got me thinking about Spelljammer.

First Time: In Media Res

The players made up characters and picked a ship. One of the players mentioned that they didn’t have a Thief. I had just learned about in media res in English class.

“We’re starting in media res!,” I announced, proud of my ability to play 8th grade English to D&D. “You are chasing this fiery pyramid through space, trying to catch and kill the Sun Pharoah!”

“Why are we chasing him?”

Why? Huh.

“Because the Sun Pharoah killed your party’s thief!”

And off we went…

The Next Time: Bral Prison

I was in college and we had spent the day in Ithaca’s gorges but had gathered in the late afternoon at a friend’s house. We were perusing his milk crates of 2nd edition material. Someone said something about gaming and someone else said something about how off-the-cuff games never seem to work. Jason looked at me because he knew I’d take that as a personal challenge.

Jason was right.

I asked the players to make up anything they could make from the material in the crates – their characters had to be criminals who were imprisoned on the under-side of the Rock of Bral. “The only catch is that you were not framed. You did the crime.”

While they made up characters I jotted down a page full of names. We gamed out asses off and it was good fun.

Good times, Spelljammer.

Wrote this up as a post on the DCCRPG G+ Community but wanted it on the blog too.

Tonight we played Frozen in Time as a 0 level funnel.

If you don’t know what a funnel is, it breaks down like so. Players have four 0-level characters with vocations like beekeeper, blacksmith, elven glassblower, slave, wainwright, etc. They go through a dungeon adventure with 1-4 hit points and those who survive become the player characters.

First thing’s first…

Rest in Peace

Nannie Milhaus Cromwell the smith, femoral artery pierced by Bore Bugs

Delbret the Beepkeeper, skull crushed like a grape by a robot’s pincer-hands, skull cavity licked thoroughly by Carl the Pig (not a nickname, an actual pig)

Highlights

Hugo trading for a grappling hook and a Holy Symbol of the Whale God just outside the caves with the locals who came to watch the crazy foreigners go into the haunted glacier.

Players winning the yeti over with food when fire didn’t work.

Groat the Slave, in the midst of the battle with the robot, praying over his strange shaped rock to the Chaos Gods for aid – no response.

Players wrapping the robot up in a chain, winning a big Strength test and holding it down for a while. Once 5 PC’s were holding the chain, I asked them to make a Strength roll vs the robot, with the highest Strength modifier and the players rolling a d30 vs the Robot’s d20. They won and held it down for a bit.

Then was a funky moment where Groat gumbled, Eric rolled on the fumble table and rolled a 16+ but with the robot subdued, it made more sense for a really bad fumble to mean cutting the chain and with the group’s blessing, that is what I did.

Then Groat picked up the katana of the Enteral Shogunate of the Lich Shogun, fumbling and cutting the chain that was holding down the robot.

Group killing the robot just before it could kill Groat.

Llaras fitting into the Petal Knight’s full plate armor after making the roll of a 17 on a Luck check.

E: Llaras would like to wear the armor. Does it fit?

J: I dunno. Make a luck roll!

Thoughts

There are a whole lot of slow, even nearly harmless rooms but that ramps up the tension for those rooms where there is a whole lot at stake. Fun times for my first time as a DCCRPG Judge!

I have an idea for a Total Party Kill 0-level funnel. Please respond to the below question and help me develop it a bit.

Thank you!

Your group was prepared and had a solid plan but a few bad rolls and some unlucky decisions led to a total party kill. You are the first half-hour into the game.

The Judge doesn’t seem worried.

“Tell me which of your characters went to heaven and which went to hell?”

Hell

Your characters’ souls are stuck in a barbed iron cube cage, 30 x 30. Winged devils wheel in the black-clouded skies overhead and the white salt plains stretch out to the Devil-God’s body, stretched across the horizon like a mountain range. Whatever lumbering beast of burden is pulling the cage might haveve been human; you aren’t sure.

The Devils take whatever they can carry (including many of the items the PC’s were carrying when they died) to avoid a coming storm. You over-hear them say something about making it to Marrow-town, by flying towards the Devil-God’s feet for half a day, before the storm hits.

You are 0-level, no matter what level you were in life. Your experiences are in the items the devils are carrying with them to Marrow-town.

Local flora takes the shape of bodies stretched out as if in the midst of a painful spasm. Local fauna look like they might be made of people’s souls molded to look like a devil’s memory of the real world’s predators, prey and domesticated animals.

The winged devils are specks on the horizon. Your cage’s beast of burden has wondered back into the area, chewing on a cactus that looks like a screaming thing. The wind is picking up. Thunder and lightning are growing closer.

What do you do?

Paladin in Hell by David C. Southerland

Wizards fill their skull to capacity with alien concepts so they can open short, somewhat-controlled gates to other worlds in order to make effects occur in their own worlds. This has consequences.

Within the first year of their death, a wizard’s skull bursts open and their rotting brain hits the ground with a acidic splat. Their spells become rooms (leading credence to the theory that all spells coincide with places, the subject of another treatise), their cunning becomes traps, their fears become monsters and their wisdom becomes treasure.

Also, their treasure becomes treasure.

Wizard tombs are designed like seeds, ready to expand when their arcane brains burst open with arcane pollen but it doesn’t matter. It becomes messy when a wizard dies and rots in an urban sewer, or a noble’s mausoleum or an abandoned barn only to have something grow in another place’s midst. Sometimes a wizard might die in a dungeon made from another dead wizard, leading to areas where their brains overlap and spells merge with spells, cunning with wisdom, treasure with fear. This is one way in which mega-dungeons are born.

A lich can take their own brain and seed it like a farmer, guiding the tunnels made from their own mind, pruning it like a tree.

Circle of Hands

Bret set up a really solid Venture with no easy solutions.

We killed the wizard who thought he was defending the town but we didn’t know he wouldn’t die, that he’d just turn into a silver dragon and come back. He did. My character really didn’t want it to turn to blood in the first place. We couldn’t beat the silver dragon. We’re bad-ass Circle Knights but we’re also pragmatists. We walked away, with the asshole silver dragon flying over us, to make sure we aren’t up to any bullshit.

We walked away, knowing full well we’d go back some day and get that emmer effer.

Burning Wheel

Our G+ game using the Kingmaker Adventure Path as its starting inspiration point has been having so many fine moments that it is hard to narrow it down. It is interesting watching this game set on the frontier turn into a muddy mess as refugees pile in front nearby wars. I’m eager to see where this game is headed.

Dogs in the Vineyard

I missed this game and I’m looking forward to making a new town for the next game.

The initiation conflicts: Will Janaki’s Watchdog find faith in the words of the Book of Life? No.

Will Laura’s Watchdog forgive her Steward for what he did to her? Yes.

Next game will be her hometown. She wants to confront her Steward.

Dungeon Crawl Classics

When the game starts with a dozen nobodies piling into a haunted glacier, every little detail becomes a foundation of world-building.

Locals who trade the PC’s throw in a holy symbol of the Whale God.

Eric has both a slave and an elven glass-blower among his starting 0-level quartet. He decides the elf owns the slave. Now elves own slaves. It is a thing, just in case you needed another reason not to like elves (effing elves).

There is something about the danger, chaos and death that makes details stand out.

Advanced Wizards & Wizards

Seeing Matt’s d20 game design is really cool. He’s put together a really nifty system that makes 3E magic and parties filled with wizards really work. I came in at the end and will be ending in the next few weeks.

These aren’t all weekly games. Circle of Hands and BW are regular. DitV is a fill-in game. DCCRPG is catch-as-catch-can; our next game is scheduled (Yay!).

What is happening at your table?

The act of leaving everything you know behind in order to face chaos, death and blood carves a space out of the world, A seed that sprouts slowly and subtly but grows more concrete as adventures are scarred and beaten in the ruins, tombs and towers where they gain their gold and experience. This magic starts as something subtle, barely remembered dreams, shapes of adventures to come. Time and survival carve out a piece of dream-space where future delves can be planned and past adventures can be memorialized in a room-sized pocket dimensional demi-plane: the Tavern Between Dreams.

Judge Notes

During those first levels, they have vague dreams of symbols that represent the modules that could come next, perhaps if there is more than one to choose from, you allow them to choose a vague symbol representing an adventure to come. The dreams become more clear, more lucid over time. There is a table for the group to sit around, a tome to write down their intentions when they wish to break the laws of creation (DCCRPG, 306).

Eventually, someone is there, a castellan, a servant, sometimes referred to as a tavern-keeper. The Tavern-Keeper serves drinks and offers an understanding ear. Whether the Tavern-Keeper is a soulless construct, a ghost or some kind of gestalt soul of all of the adventurers who died on the way is unknown.

Levels

1st: Experiences in the space are vague and misty, INT check DC 10 to see if you remember anything but a single symbol or image upon waking.

2nd: It is all a faraway dream but growing more tangible while you are there, INT check DC 5 to see if you remember anything more than a single image or symbol upon waking.

3rd: A vivid and clear waking dream, the table and the tome with its quill are solid, you remember everything upon waking.

4th: The tavern-keeper is present, acting as if it was always there.

5th: Grottos for trophies and memorial statues representing those who have died are present. All trophies are dream-objects representing great deeds. Scrolls recording the band’s adventures are present. Real world items that were being held while falling asleep can be stored here.

6th: Party members can invite an ally to join them here for a lucid dream. Oaths made here are unusually binding.

7th: Friends and loved ones can offer a token while in the Tavern Between Dreams, this token can be used to contact them through dreams.

8th: Messengers arrive who can send and receive missives to mortals through dreams.

9th: The messengers within the tavern-space can petition greater powers (demons, devils, elemental lords, beast lords, archmages, liches, etc.).

10th: The Tavern Between Dreams anchors itself into the waking world, becoming a pocket plane with a door that can open whenever 3 or more members of the band are within sight of one another.

Essentially, this whole thing is a corny reason to deposit the group from one DCC module to another with a thin in-game magical excuse, giving the group an arcane place that grows with their characters in which they can celebrate their victories and raise their cups to the victorious dead.

Reading: I’m listening to The Scar on the commute. Every re-read I like it more; it might be my favorite book.

I’m reading Clark Ashton Smith’s The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies while also perusing The Last Days of Angelkite and Night Witches.

CAS has me writing down lots of words to look up later.

Angelkite has me wanting to stab the Cray Def Un in the face.

Night Witches has me wanting to round up some elderly ladies from the local community and game.

Planning: Movie, work, game

Writing: Notes for lots of blog posts will become actual blog posts next week. Magic sword rules and gaining new skills rules for DCCRPG and Make Your Own New Crobuzon Redux.

And you?

Another Beautiful Dyson Logos map

The Duke of Alderbridge turned his back on the River Gods his family has worshipped for generations and was purified by the priests of a new faith, a god of humans, the prime primate, the First Man. He demanded the elf prince’s delegation leave the city walls. He demanded the dwarven guildsfolk take their goods and begone. His priests blamed halflings for several problems and their shire was raided (without the Duke’s permission, of course) by local knights and squires seeking vengeance.  A halfling visiting the city with a wizard was found floating in the river. The duke kept hostages – an elf prince, a dwarven shield-maiden and the wizard said to be a friend and drug dealer of the halflings.

When the Duke sent missives saying that all impure (non-human) goods would be further taxed in order to mitigate the damage done to human souls for trafficking in xenosin, the armies gathered. The elven queen and 7 dwarven kings declared the duke a misbegotten son of a youngling species whose head would be put on display on an adamant pike and marched between their thrones as a warning. The villages between the elves, dwarves and Alderbridge were put to the torch, their people driven behind the duke’s walls in hopes of speeding up the siege’s starvation.

The elven archers and cavalry have set up camp beyond a catapult’s throw from the northern wall. The best nigh-immortal archers watch the castle walls, taking shots whenever they see movement. The duke’s nephew was shot in the throat and will likely die.

The dwarven host took the south. The long, straight, southern wall appealed to the stone-lords. They are building their siege engines even now, singing songs about turning the younglings’ architecture into rubble. Kuroth’s Crossing will be left untouched.

It seemed like the orchards to the northeast were open. The duke’s first riders were sent during the first moonless night. Halfling sling-stones pelted horse and rider alike. None were said to survive.

Mercenary wizards have summoned Water Elementals that prowl the river, destroying boat traffic.

The harvests had not yet been brought in. They say the fields are afire even now. Rumors have it that anyone caught is either killed on sight or sent south to be put into the dungeon-prison of the Archmage, whose disdain for the First Man’s religion is well known.

And here you are: indentured servants, wainrights, criminals, turnip farmers, costermongers, alchemists, barbers and squires, all driven behind the walls. Alderbridge folk are already hiding food and grumbling about the newcomers in from the villages.

What will chaos, blood, sorcery, hubris and steel cause you to become?

Reading: I’m reading Grace of Kings and it is fine at what it is doing but I think my heart just isn’t in an epic fantasy series. I might move on to something non-fiction, cleanse my palate.

Just as I arrived at work today the audiobook of The Scar finished. I love that book. Iron Council is definitely next.

Planning: Lots of games are popping up this weekend.

Writing: I couldn’t pull the trigger on the blog posts I wanted to get out this week but they are moving right along. Other stuff I don’t want to jinx (and one thing-I-can’t-mention that got tossed out, maybe to be brought back later).

And you?