The Monolith

I've been wanting to include some sort of monolithic structures in my D&D games, and make them more than just your basic runestones or Stonehenge esque deals.

One of the ideas I've had for years is a massive monolith cut out of a deep black stone covered in irregular etchings. It is cut in a roughly square shape, with an angled topside. Although it's in a verdant and lush forest, there is a 5 yard clearing around it where absolutely no plant life is found, and there is no wildlife in a large area around it. Standing next to it one can feel a slight chill, even during an otherwise warm and sunny day. On one side, the etchings give way to the image of a massive door, cut in the same style as the etchings, but more regular.

I plan on giving no hints as to what the monolith is, its purpose, or its age. I think that a little mystery in games can only be a good thing.

The Gallic War

If you haven't read it, it's a pretty good read. It's unlike the other most recent historical book I've read, Herodotus' Histories, in that it's a pretty easy read and there's not nearly as much misinformation, but that's probably because Caesar (or his ghostwriter, depending on your personal inclinations) lived in a time much more travelled and catalogued.

It's a great book, and the details on natives and their flora and fauna is interesting and, at times, fairly detailed, such as the note that elks have no joints in their legs, and grisly details on druids and wicker men. It's really about everything you need to know to run a fairly successful low-magic campaign in the area. Of course, you could add goblins and dwarves and

The point I was going to make, though, is that you can flip open the book, and immediately find a good adventure hook. Some of the things I can remember off the top of my head:

• Caesar advances into Gallic territory, but in so doing, he crosses a river. His soldiers build a bridge across, and in so doing, station a legion at the tower. This tower is on the border of Gaul and "Germany" (really, a collection of Germanic tribes). You and your party are the captains of this legion.
• Caesar's scouts use a blitzkreig style cavalry rush to find a traitor. You find him with orders to capture him and bring him to Caesar, but he escapes in the commotion and is now hiding amongst the common people. You must find him, and quickly, before he gets away.
• Caesar leaves for the winter, and leaves your legion as a garrison in a rebellious enemy's territory. You must convince them to put down hopes for their rebellion or, failing that, must endure a seige from the natives in unfamiliar territory. 
• You are one of Caesar's cavalrymen, drawn from the native countryside. Your countrymen recognize you in battle, and call you names. Caesar uses you to infiltrate the enemy camp to gather intelligence. Do you stay with your fellows, or do you return your loyalty to Rome?

That sort of thing. The situations Caesar and his legions find themselves in are always interesting, and usually dangerous, and even if you're not into the military campaign style of gaming, you could always be treasure-hunters, mercenaries, or just power players in the giant vacuum that Rome accidentally creates when they kill the native leaders and make the next in line swear fealty to Rome. What do you do now that you could have it all?

Aremorican Addendum: Bonus Material!

I gotta come out and say it, bonus material is a bit of a misnomer for a free pdf, right? Doesn't matter, since it's some stuff that's been in the works for a hot minute and now's the time for it to see the dawn of light.

Yeah, that thing.

The highlights!

• Crusaders get their own magic system, called Invocations. They bellow the names of their gods on high, and are rewarded with divine aid. Think "By the thunderbolts of Zeus, I will destroy you!", or something as simple as "Crom's Beard!"
• Diabolists get an expanded spell list! An additional three to five spells are added to each spell list, and Frost magic gets added to their list of spheres.
• Acolytes and Sorcerers each get a minor tweak to change the flavour of their powers. Sorcerers channel elemental might instead of summoning an elemental minion, and Acolytes get their magical abilities tweaked a little bit. For example, Rejuvenation is a little weaker, healing 1d4 instead of 1d6 per casting.

What else is coming down the pipeline? Well, Dark Skies Above Us is about halfway done, having detailed the major areas, and a good chunk of the minor areas. Let me enthrall you with a little teaser, in the form of area 3:

Area 3:

In this room are two zombies (hps 3, 8) and one ghoul (hp 7). 

They are discussing something in a bizarre tongue, and can be heard through the door if the players listen.

In the room is a small chest containing the shared belongings of the three; 25 silver and four gold, as well as an iron dagger and a small silver idol weighing one pound.

Notice: Three terse sentences detailing what's to be found, what the monsters are doing, and what's in the treasure chest. The details regarding what the area is like, how broad the tunnels are, and all of that jazz are directly under the section heading. A DM can read through the section heading quickly and easily to devour the information and, hopefully, get everything across to his players quickly and easily.


Be on the lookout for when the updated Aremorican Addendum drops, as well as when Dark Skies Above Us comes out! I'll post here, so check back!

The V2 Dungeon Map: First Draft

The Louvre should be calling any day now.

This is the first draft of the V2: Dark Skies Above Us dungeon. It's made in the medium of crayon on lined notebook paper. It's a little known fact, but Monet was an advocate of this medium, and often insisted on doodling in crayon before painting directly over the waxy drawing. I dunno, he scraped it off or something, don't ask me.

Just thought you guys might be interested in looking at it. The "S" designates a secret door, and the lines designate passageways. The entire complex is built out of the local stone, probably granite although I haven't decided, seeing as how a little more research on rock formations is going to be necessary. Hopefully for the rough draft I can at least remember to draw on unlined paper, right?  How will the crayon-drawers amongst us be taken seriously when we're held back by the distinctly amateurish blue and red lines on our paper?

Servants of Plague Translated!

Something seems different about you,
Servants of Plague.

In case you are more comfortable in German than in English, the fine folks at Herr Der Labyrinth have translated my adventure, Servants of Plague into German. I know, right? How cool is that? In addition, their maps are better looking and cleaner than mine, so it deserves a check out even if you don't speak German.

Seriously, they did an awesome job and I couldn't be happier that they've translated my work. Thanks for everything, guys! You guys are awesome.

Here's to productive partnerships with our German brothers and sisters in the future.

Houserule: Wounds

Lord Chivalrous suddenly wonders whether
he left the kettle on.

One of the things that's bothered me for a long time is the treatment of hit points in D&D; specifically, how hit points are simultaneously health and not-health. They represent your ability to not get killed, luck, divine intervention, and sheer pluck. They also represent your ability to take hits, roll with punches, and sheer stubbornnes.

And there's nothing innately wrong with that. There's no real reason that you can't be the final arbiter of your character's skill, that two Fighters with 10 hit points can't be narratively different, with one not even noticing the stab wound in his arm as he kicks the orc in the chest, and the other skillfully dodging under the minotaur's clumsy, overhand hack and body-slamming the brute. Mechanically, according to D&D, there's no difference. And that's pretty cool, actually.

But there is something innately dissatisfying with the idea that this abstract representation takes so long to heal up. 1 hit point a day? Seriously? What am I "healing", anyways? Conan famously requires nothing more than breathing room and a swig of wine to ignore his wounds, and that's the sort of thing we should emulate, not Final Fantasy time and money drains.

In short, I've been considering adding Wounds to Labyrinth Lord, and they'd work fairly simply. You keep track of your Wounds separately, with each one reducing your maximum hit points by one. You take a wound whenever you get damaged by something. (Alternately, you could take a Wound for every 4 damage you take. Or, if you like, damage equal to half the class' hit dice size- so every 2 points for wizards, 3 for clerics, and 4 for fighters. This helps your tougher classes stay in the fight longer, if you're so inclined.) In this way, a hit means a hit, and Wounds represent real, physical damage. Whether you get hit by a stray arrow, an orc's sword, or the like, Wounds hurt, and they need to be healed.

To make up for your rapidly dwindling health, you regain all of your Hit Points by simply catching a breather of a minute or two. But not your Wounds. Your Wounds disappear at a rate of 1/level every time you get a good night's sleep. So, in other words, your Wounds represent the very real scrapes, cuts, bruises, gashes, concussions, and other sundry ailments that a life of hardship and pain brings. It represents the fact that even a knife cut hurts.

Clerics and other sources of healing magic can heal Wounds at a rate of 1 Wound per 5 HP healed, if they so choose. Of course, their healing is still useful, as it keeps a man from dying in combat, and is extremely useful for bringing a man up from the prone position, so to speak.

So you're tougher, and you can fight for longer in a day, but you still can't fight forever like some adventurers in "other games" can. But you're not any stronger in a straight fight than generic LL, so it's not like you have to redesign fights, encounters, or any sort of adventures. It puts a higher cap on what you can accomplish in a day, and that's always a Good Thing.

The Two Potential Covers

This was supposed to happen with the Servants of Plague cover, where I posted two different options for consideration, but if that project stalled anymore, it'd go straight into a death spiral, ending only when it smashed into my head and severed into hemispheres. Nobody wants that.

So in the interest of continued sanity, here is a new prototype I'd been working on. I'm not too terribly sold on either one, but the first one is the layout I'd been using, and the second one is the one I've been working on. It's not a finished prototype, but there are certain things I like about them both.

The current "look" of the V series of modules produced
by yours truly.

Option One
This one is the basic, utilitarian version. It's got a black bar, then a picture, then some description text. It's simple, and unpretentious. It emulates the modules of old without assuming prior knowledge of them. It's clean, and is composed of sharp lines and straight edges. It's got a timeless look to it, as proved by the fact that it's how most adventure modules have looked since, well, adventure modules started looking like adventure modules.

On the other hand, it's fairly basic looking. There hasn't been a lot of innovation in module design, and it mostly looks like this. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, and it certainly beats some modern designs. There's a lot of modules that look like this, and that's kind of a problem. Mostly, because any comparison of my hobby's products will pale in imitation to the original greats, or especially anything that the OSR comes out with. Much like any other form of lazy presentation, it makes one wonder as to the effort made inside. If they can't be bothered to create an original and appealing cover for their work, what makes anybody think they put any effort into the inside? Of course, that's vastly unfair to those of us who are not artists by any stretch, but such is life.

Option Two

The potential new "look" of the V series of
Labyrinth Lord modules.

This cover keeps the solid background and the emphasis on text over art, but adds a splash of color in the corner and a little beveled text boxes, two things which help the cover stand out at least a tiny bit in comparison. In addition, there's room for a silly little woodcut graphic of a knight, an image I like very much.

The cons? Well, I'm not sure about the red, or the bevelled box for the title, or the fact that it cuts over the image. In addition, I'm feeling that the "V2" text should be white, not black. Other than that, it's ok. It seems perhaps like it tries a little hard to have a "new and improved!" feel, when it's really impossible to improve over the balanced and classic design of the originals.

What do you think? Emulate the originals, try and improve on them, or try something else entirely?

EDIT: Hybrid Option

This is a hybrid design, taking the rounded box and font of version two and keeping the more reduced aesthetic of version one. The knight on the lower left is still there because, after all, he's still pretty cool. The attribution could stand to be a little bigger, and the knight image a little smaller, but still, tweaking isn't such a bad thing.

If this ends up being the final design, then it'll be absolutely no problem to edit Servants of Plague to conform to this standard, since these templates are made in Inkscape, which is about the best format known to man, as far as ease of use goes.

I kind of like the hybrid, to be honest with you. It might end up being the "final draft" so to speak.

Death by Mold / What's Next?

One of my players the other week died because they set foot in some yellow mold. The mold, being a weaker variety than normal, dealt less damage than it normally would have. After being burnt a little by its acid, they took note and decided to drop a torch on it.

Normally, it would have resulted in a normal bit of damage, but this mold happened to be underground in an extremely arid environment. The fire spread out, and burnt both the players for a tiny bit of damage, which unfortunately was more than the Minotaur ("reskinned" fighter) could bear. He died, leaving the cleric to flee back to the surface where the Minotaur's brother was waiting for the two of them to come out. When only the cleric returned, Minotaur II vowed to finish his brother's works.

Just a quick anecdote on one of my favorite player deaths. Set ablaze by a yellow mold's corpse! Classic.

Servants of Plague Released TODAY!

Even though it's my birthday, I'm giving you guys a present: The long-delayed Servants of Plague pdf, available now from Scribd. It's designed for a small low-level party, and it's a fairly minimalistic set of notes, clocking in at under 20 pages. That's despite there being stats for three new monsters, a couple of new magic items, five or six diseases, 20+ areas, and two maps. If you're looking for a quick bang-for-your-buck deal, then Servants of Plague has got your number. For the low, low price of free, you can have a 20-page quick-playing adventure for you and your buddies.

Even though it's up on Scribd, I'm still not sold on the cover layout or the two-column style of the text on the inside of the pdf. Let me know what you guys think- good, bad, or in between.


I hope you like it as much as I liked writing it!

The link: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35352402/Servants-of-Plague

The forum link is here.

The German-language version is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/35878497/DieDienerschaftderSeuche

A Map for Servants of Plague

Just a quick question: Are maps an area of serious concern? Would a seriously amateur map (drawn by me, more than likely) be especially noticeable? Is a bad map worse than no map whatsoever?

Just wondering. The closer my module gets to completion, the more questions pop up before it's ready to be seen by the public.