"Fire Fight With The Mi Go At Asylum Q" Actual Play Event & Encounter Tables

The other night I finally wrapped up Asylum Q, the PC's managed to rescue all of the Elves from the clutches of the evil medical experimenters who were harvesting the brains and organs. Some 'old friends' of the party of adventurers reared their heads in the form of the Mi Go. Archaic and alien tech was all over the place as the PC's explored the inner tunnels below to the realm of horror below the bowels of the place. Mazes of hallways, twisting tunnels, and weird back rooms all circled around the inner workings.
Elves were strapped in on stretchers, IV's sticking out and diagnostic machines kept track of their lives as organs were harvested for unknown and alien purpose.

After a lengthy fire fire with arrows, firearms, and energy weapons two of the PC's were injured but the rest of the party was able to route the Mi Go workers. But the PC's have no idea who's really behind the kidnapping of the Elves. The vile villain has been one step ahead of the PC's throughout this game. The PC's were able to escape through a gate they had come through earlier in this adventure and had managed to even get a bit of loot in the process. But it cost them at several turns in the form of injuries and problems. By two AM they had jumped several dimensional gates and returned the Elves to their Neo England home.
Yes that's right this was a long game and it took that long to wrap up this leg of my campaign.

Mi Go by Khannea SunTzu

Some of the monsters & inhabitants they had encountered in Asylum Q kept them rather busy and almost ended two parties. The other dimensional adventure location still stands awaiting to cause all kinds of hell for any old school adventurers that run into it. Asylum Q sits there on five miles of twisting hellscape waiting to trap,destroy and twist anyone that runs into it. Here are some of the random encounters that the PC's ran into.

Note that anyone staying in the other dimensional location of the asylum for more then 4 hours must make a save vs magic roll or become mutated by the weird alien radiations that run throughout Asylum Q.
Asylum Q Random Adventure Encounters Table
The Inner Levels

1. 1d8 Apparitions lost in time and space, former victims of the place. They were caught in the events that created the space time accident of the asylum. They hunger for the life force and souls of their victims. 
2. 1d4 giant mutated assassin bugs looking for new hosts for their progeny. These things will sport 1d6 minor mutations. 
3. A dimensional  vortex where 1d4 astral searchers are waiting, these beings are former staff of the hospital and are searching for bodies and victims to possesses. They are unaware of their current state of being. 
4. 1d4 A family of Adherers who are the mutated victims of this place. They are former adventurers twisted by the other dimensional energies of the place. They seek fresh prey but can sleep for decades if necessary. 
5. A blindhem on the loose looking for a victim to drag off and eat. 
6. 1d6 giant blood worms hanging from the ceiling almost in a sort of stasis. 
7. A gang of other dimensional bullywog adventurers who are very lost, afraid and armed with spears, shields, poisoned arrows, short bows, and two laser pistols.They'll attack anything that moves. 
8. 1d6 Cifals on the bidding of their alien masters, they will attack and devour anyone that they come across. 
9. 1d6 Coffer corpses of former staff and other lost adventurers who roaming the halls hungry, dangerous and have been summoned by cultists for a rite in another wing. 
10. Two eye killers who have been summoned by cultists from the Outer darkness but have killed their summoners. They now search for fresh prey. 
11. 1d10 ancient cultists on their way to one of the perverted chapels on the grounds of the asylum. They move through the underground tunnels avoiding the horrors above ground. They are led by 4th level black wizard and his cleric servant.
12. A lone Ettercap whose hunting for its family. He serves a spider cult in another wing of the place. 
13. A gang of Gibberlings 1d10 of the things that have hatched from the bodies of adventurers on another floor. 
14. Protein Polymorph of exceptionally large growth feasting on the corpses of adventurers.
15. Two hook horrors who serve Nicodemous the 7th level black magicians from Azlorth whose become trapped in the Asylum but is making the most of it. 
16. Mi Go workers who were left behind after the colony left this place. 
17. Flay Snail cleaning the floors and corridors of bodies or loot. They feed partially on the other dimensional energies of the place. There are eight of these things who do clean up on the lower levels of this place.
18. A family of 1d6 screaming devilkin are feasting on the corpse of an alien adventurer who ran afoul of a giant demonic spider that they keep out of the way of but steal prey from. The spider will move in for any tasty new prey. 
19. Two shockers who are actually other dimensional adventurers caught by one of the random dimensional shifts and twisted into a creature of alien energies. 
20. 8th level black wizard whose pissed that your adventurers have trespassed into his domain. He'll blast those who disturb him.
    
    

Rumble At 'Asylum Q' Actual Play Event Overview & Encounter Tables

In last night's game the PC's were lead to the Asylum Q via the planar trails to the dimensional location by a party of NPC adventurers who refused to deal the five square mile hellish and haunted  location.
Five minutes into the session and the party is dealing with a Hell Dropper or two from the trees. Mobile ooze life forms that explode into acid filled sacs of fun.
The opted not to go into the facility on the trail of their black wizard from Koth  through the front door and instead find another way in. There were 'things' in the underbrush and the party had to deal with them. Wolves twisted by the energies of this other worldly location and events of the former facility gave them a hard time. Almost as if the place didn't want them there. What was really creepy was the 'wolves' flesh trying to flow back together after being dispatched by the PC's.

They finally penetrated the halls of the place via door that somehow opened into a patient's room. The place was spartan at best and in a completely decayed state. There was a wrongness to the place and one of the PC's happened upon a skeleton. After searching the body carefully they made their way into the halls.

They searched room by room coming across former adventurers corpses, confronting and battling unspeakable horrors. Dealing with weird phenomena and they have not penetrated the inner mysteries of the place nor faced the scorpion crab mercenaries.. yet. The PC's are still in the outer locations and are going down into the main areas next week. 

Asylum Q is a temporal wasteland accessible via the dimension time trails that lead to alternative Earths and weird locations caught between the planes. The 'Event' shattered many of these minor realms leading to all kinds of issues.Here are some of the monsters that adventurers might encounter in the halls of the place.

Random Asylum Q Adventure Encounters Table

1. 1d4 dark creeper cultists on a mission, they will be very aggressive and dangerous. 
2. Neothelid wizard and 1d4 slaves with it, on a mission to recover an alien bauble for its collection. 
3. Clock work organ harvester on its rounds through the halls looking for any strays it can get. 
4. A weird floating other dimensional eye acting as an agent for its dark master looking for a damned soul, will yours do. 
5. A bit of an ooze and a primal horror zipping across the ceiling ready to drop on to a party of adventurers. 
6. A group of 1d4  temporal apparitions of adventurers who don't realize that their dead and are going through the motions of adventuring through the halls. If you watch they may reenact their deaths or try to kill you.

Adventure Workshop With Asylum Q For Tonight's OSR Game Event

Sunday I spent the day away from the internet and social media, instead I spent the day with friends doing a bit of brain storming and world building. The location for tonight's adventure was basically a blank canvas and we began by choosing a not too often used AD&D 1st edition book, in this case the Fiend Folio. The next trick was to pick and develop the vile villain of the piece. That's where Venger Satanis's Revelry In Torth came in. As one of the reviews stated from Amazon," Lastly, I really like that Torth was designed with fan participation in mind. If you get inspired and wanna create your own module for this mindf*ck of a lovechild, contact Venger Satanis and tell him what you have in mind. He'll work with you from there.  If your intent is to simply make a module and throw it out there for "unoffically" then go ahead and make it your bitch with no restrictions. After you've made it public, send Venger a link so he can help other Torth fans find it." Given some of the nasty Lovecraftian magick hiding just under the surface of the module this was an easy fit.

The look and feel of the adventure is just as important as the direct that you want to take with it, in this case I'm playing with the tropes of a haunted house style adventure but mimicking the usual fun house style but inverting it almost Silent Hill style keeping adventurers on their toes every step of the way. Death lurks around almost every corner. The trick here is to avoid the usual pit falls of D&D adventure design and tug the players into an unexpected direction. Knowing your players personally instead of the usual convention pit falls also helps with this. In a con your going to be playing with strangers but in a home game the dungeon master is afforded the luxury of dealing with the one on one personal experience. So you can tailor your adventures as needed.

Next came the grounds and how they're going to be put together given the fact that this isn't our world per say and that its a massive sprawling complex with almost a hundred year history in its wanderings I decided to go with a something a bit different on some of the floors, I took out The Star Ship From Hell By Rafael Chandler From Neo Plastic Press  to develop some of the weird alien medical tech medical wings and really give the place an unearthly feel.  From there a few of the grounds and weird phenomena were quickly filled in with some really dangerous wild life from the Teratic Tome and Lasus Naturae which  is now available in PDF at DriveThruRPG and RPGNow. The random table were perfect for generating strange life forms and dangerous stuff as needed. One thing I've learned over the last couple of months reading, writing, and doing development work is that you need to keep things tight and keep the adventure to about six pages.

This is the perfect length for a night's entertainment with up to about six players and enables the DM to go through the material to get the PC's in and out of the adventure location, to the conclusion and goal of the adventure and to give the PC's either modest treasure or a minor reward keeping the victim errm heroes on the reel. It also keeps the adventurers hungry for the next adventure!

Asylum Q an Adventure Location For Your Old School Campaigns & Actual Game Event

So tonight I'm wrapping up writing out and designing my new adventure Asylum Q, I've spent most of the day away from the computer and social media getting this bad boy together. So what is Asylum Q? Well, its no place at all simply an other dimensional location five miles square where nature has become a twisted version of itself and it's become 'unhinged' from its world by the 'Event'. The place flutters throughout the multiple planes of existence claiming new victims and unleashing its other dimensional madness on all manner of places. Now its come just in time for the PC's to explore its winding corridors, alien weirdness, strange ghosts, and more. There are twenty five Elves who were kidnapped and now the PC's are on their way to save  them! The question is whose coming to save the PC? They tracked the Elves to an other worldly slave market off planet and a mysterious masked stranger whose led them on dimensional hopping horror fest into a weird five mile stretch of psychic real estate. Welcome to Asylum Q.



So the source material for Asylum Q includes The Tetratic Tome from Raphael Chandler (which is on sale from Drivethru along with all of his other titles go check em out), the first edition AD&D Fiend Folio, Venger Satanis's Revelry In Torth, and Fantastic Heroes and Witchery. I'm also planning on using this adventure location with  Dungeon Crawl Classics as well.


The facility covers five miles of park like land now gone to wilderness, this includes various kitchens, laundries, chapels, entire pond for drinking water, other buildings for care facilities and more. In addition the facilities are interconnected by miles of underground tunnels. The entire place was powered by massive set of boiler rooms which if the rumors are to be believed are haunted by demonic Lovecraftian elemental life forms.


At Asylum Q its always night and there are three moons in the sky, the grounds surrounding the place are dangerous as well. There are weird and twisted animals and phenomena which can easily kill the unwary. As the location travels interdimensionally it picks up stray travelers, monsters, mutants, and worse. The kitchens and dining rooms are always stocked leading some to speculate that perhaps the place is run by some sort of minor god or power. The chapels serve a wide variety of weird gods and there always seem to be new statues and symbols being added with dimension visited. Haunted doesn't even begin to describe the place.
The grounds themselves team with a whole bunch of weird twisted number of beasts. There is a 30% chance of a random encounter per hour spend on the grounds. Here's a quick list of random encounters for your old school campaigns that a party of adventurers might run into.



Aslyum Q Random Adventure Encounters Table

1. Pack of 1d6 devil dogs sporting 1d4 additional chaos mutations on the hunt 
2. A lone dimensional shambler looking for a soul to take with it back to the planar wastes 
3. An adventurer's apparition on the prowl for a victim feeding off of the vibe of insanity and horror of the place. 
4. The air is filled with the buzzing of a thousand wings as a hungry swarm of mutant vampire bats takes flight 
5. A lone twisted were wolf is on the hunt sporting 1d3 additional mutations 
6. Pack of Lovecraftian ghoul warriors, 2nd level fighters have crossed over into this world

There are always weird phenomena that accompany the wanderings of Asylum Q, the place attracts strange almost alive things that wander the planes, not quite monsters, not quite elements, and always alien. Very dangerous to encounter for PC's. Here's a 1d6 weird phenomena encounter table to bedevil your adventurers further. 

1d6 Weird Phenomena Encounter Table

1. Spinning Jennies - This crystal swarm of flowing energy cascades across the target's vision and surrounds the victim in a hail of fire fly like yellow green energy. The target must save vs wands or take a mutation check as weird energies play merry havoc with their bodies.Electrical devices take a point of damage each round exposed to the Jennies.
2. Black diamonds - These weird black crystal shards grow from the ground and splinter into millions of tiny barbed crystal growths. Those exposed to the slightest cut from one of these crystals must save vs poison or death. The crystals multiply in the blood stream with two rounds erupting from the skin of the victim in an explosive spray of blood and gore. Black crystals grow from every orifice of the victim. 
3. Chain webs - These growing and glowing lattices form from the alien energies of the dimensions and siphon off the carbon and chemicals from the skins of victims. The form strange spore like growths which if breathed in grow from within the victims unless a save vs poisons is made. Cure disease or light wounds will halt the horror in its track otherwise the victim takes 1d4 points of internal damage per round as the chain webs coat every surface within the victims. 
4. Sad Marys - These strange weird stick figure like things grow on the surfaces of flesh and bone etching themselves on any flesh they come in contact with. Victims take three points of damage from the acid filled bacteria that these things living in symbiosis with. Sad Marys disfigure their victims lower charisma scores by two points from the horrific scars that they create. 
5. Volt path clouds - These are created from the horrific discharges of violet energy that certain blue green mist clouds create. Five or more clouds gather then there is a twenty percent chance of a violet hard radiation discharge being created. Mutation and radiation checks must be made when this happens. 
6. Blood snow - This stuff falls from small purple grey clouds that form in hallways and outside the weird vents to the steam tunnels below the asylum. Blood snow creates false memories with its targets and thoughts of suicide or murder can occur if exposed to this blood red snow like growths. Targets must save vs magick or spells to resist the effects. The target will be in a horrid mood with a pounding headache after being exposed  to Asylum Q's energies.

More coming up in part II

Free OSR Download - Underworld Kingdom Volume One: Explorers of the Unknown By Albert Rakowski For Your Old School Campaigns

Need a solid old school download to round out your science fantasy campaigns? Well I recommend Underworld Kingdom Volume One: Explorers of the Unknown By Albert Rakowski which has a whole bunch of old school goodness within. This nice little volume contains a plethora of information including mutational tables, prophecy tables, and a whole lovely little bunch of tables perfect to add a bit more weirdness to your old school games.



Grab It Right
HERE

From old school random names for NPC's to equipment lists this little free volume contains a whole packet of material that can quickly be added to your favorite retro clone system or old school science fantasy game. Many of these systems would later be incorporated into the author's Bandits and Battlecruiser title. But this title is perfect to add in a bit flare to your old school campaigns. The author has done an excellent job of adding in and an expanding the old school equipment lists.
This is a pretty sweet little free download, everything is nice and concisely done and ready to drop into an existing campaign. The idea here are fresh and interesting enough to add a new bit of flare to a campaign in play already.
This is only the first volume in a series of books, these supplements are perfect for use as adventure generators. They're filled with a myriad of random tables that can be applied to any number of genres. With a few throws you can have a suitable background for a villainous NPC or an extended background for your PC. But with this book you can add everything from background to prophecies concerning your dungeon.
All in all not a bad little book to add into your OSR DM's tool box, a nice free addition to help add yet another dimension to adventures and parties of adventurers.