Monday, November 25, 2019

Immortality's Price - Cha'alt & The Gods of B/X Dungeons & Dragons


Now I've spoken at length about the real need for heroes & adventurers in OSR & old school campaign. I've spoken at length about the veneer of Dungeons & Dragons as well as it use in old school campaigns.  But when you start looking into the mind set of Dungeons & Dragons especially the length & breath of campaign several things become apparent. Even with large groups of players & their PC's they might not cover every event in a world spanning campaign. Take a look at Wraith of the Immortals box set for exactly the sort of weirdness I'm talking about.



Now start thinking about campaign shattering locations as well & let's look at the recent inclusion of Venger Satanis's Cha'alt.  The appearance of the world setting of Cha'alt in my own game campaigns has caused a complete shift of attention from the Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence.   And this is fine with me because the islands could & will comeback to bite the players in the ass again. The same way that events from the Wraith of the Immortals box set can & will bite player's PC's in the ass. Just because you might be high level or even demi gods in my campaign's case because I'm using Godbound as my base system doesn't mean that events in a campaign don't continue to unfold around the PC's!



Los Vegas has been ravaged by the appearance of Cha'alt & the black pyramid! The events continue to unfold between sessions as factions get stronger & weaker. There are other NPC adventurers & player  heroes in play all of the while that my main group of player's PC's are working their way through Vegas. Both Godbound & Cha'alt have built in faction event generators built right into the systems. As the dungeon master I'm taking prime advantage of this fact! 



Right now I'm using those same rules & random generators to pull material & update stuff from the Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence.   Especially some of the weird alien factions that aren't complete fleshed out in the main island book.. These are being taken to the next level. The Islands of Purple Haunted Putrescence have in fact manifested right of the Gulf of Mexico in my Friday night game. Several US army officers have come under the influence of The Mighty Servant of Leuk-o. But this version of the Mighty Servant has its own ideas & I'm incorporating some of the ideas from 
Dead God Excavation. 


Now all though this may not seem like its straight out Basic/Expert  Dungeons & Dragons campaign don't let the gonzo paint job fool you. I've been reading through Frank Mentzer 's Immortals box set along with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons first edition's Deities & Demigods.  The gods from these sets are at a whole other level of reality then any of the Godbound. But they may not be put into an adversarial NPC position but instead their help might be needed to help put reality right in this campaign. 


Yes I totally stole this picture from wayne's books but the fact is that words of godbound have a limited influence within a campaign's time space continuum. But the immortals use spheres of influence over such as time, space, entropy, etc. This takes full advantage of the fact that immortals take the place of gods as agents or arbiters in other realities. The PC's might need their help repairing the damage that the Lovecraftian agents of chaos have done. That is if they can?!
This takes campaign events full circle & brings it back into the D&D fold once again. But more importantly it pushes a Mythological adventure narrative unto the campaign.. 
Happy bday Venger & the Satanis family! 

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