Sex, Death, Chaos, and Hell Or How To Make Hell Work For You In Your Mega Dungeon

Its Jack Kirby's birthday today and there's one of his creations that I absolutely love, Etrigan the Demon.Today bears little to no resemblance to the Jack Kirby's original creation. All of this really relates back to the 90's and the even further back to the Satanic Panic of the 80's.But I digress, Etrigan is perhaps on of Jack Kirby's finest creations and perhaps on of his most underrated in my humble opinion. What does this have to do with megadungeons, Chaos, Hell, death, and the Demon? Well everything and nothing. Very briefly according to wiki :
The Demon is a superhero and antihero appearing in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Jack Kirby, the titular character, named Etrigan, is a demon from Hell who, despite his violent tendencies, usually finds himself allied to the forces of good, mainly because of the alliance between the heroic characters of the DC Universe and Jason Blood, a human to whom Etrigan is bound
 

I remember cracking open my first issue of  Etrigan The Demon back in late '89 from the 1970's and being blown away. After the canceling of  Kirby's Fourth World saga, he pulled the Demon out of his bag of tricks.
And at the time I was blown away with such sights as this.

There have been a few other times when I was this excited reading a comic book, the first time I read through Spawn, and the introduction of Hellboy plus the various Vertigo lines from DC back when they didn't play it safe. Hell was something #$@ed up and completely alien & when I asked one of the guys who worked with Kirby what they were thinking when they did this stuff it was his response that gave me pause. 'It was fun!'  That's right kids Chaos and Hell can be fun. Because there is a vast difference between the 'Pulp Hell' of D&D and the Hell of Scripture and religion. Pulp Hell is the Hell of horror comics, D&D, and Rpgs. Its also one of the most over used cliches since the days of Dragon magazine. But it works in grand style. So much so that in both Fantastic Heroes and Witchery as well Dark Albion, Chaos does a damn good job of aping many of the conventions and issues of Jack Kirby's the Demon in style. If you don't believe me then check out this preview of the Dark Albion's Demonic Magick


Alternative Cover for Dark Albion the Rose War Available Through Lulu

The Hell of Dark Albion is the Hell of Faust and Shakespeare as well as the Gothic writers and later the comic book and  pulp writers of yesteryear. This also dovetails into the fact that since Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea works very well with Fantastic Heroes and Witchery, many of the artifacts,treasures,locations and whatnot can be used in a modern setting. Such as the mythical past or mythological connection to a game set in modern times or as a part of an alternative Earth. A fact that has been exploited by Dungeon Crawl Classics numerous times in their products  and as something of a convention that both Marvel did with Conan back in the 70's as part of their super hero and horror titles and one that DC took full advantage of in their own Dr. Fate appearances. A more recent appearance of this convention has been recently unlocked as a part of the Ernest Gary Gygax Jr.'s Marmoreal Tomb Campaign. This megadungeon could be used to link all of the products that the Otherside mentioned. With only four days to go the Marmoreal Tomb is offering some very tasty ideas & link ups for a multidimensional megadungeon touching areas across all of time and space as well as beyond.

Artwork by Mark Allen 2014
THERE ARE ONLY FOUR DAYS TO GO!

Here's where the sex and death come in folks, given such a location of a megadungeon the powers of Chaos could well be exploiting the  heck out of this location staging numerous sorties into all kinds of campaign times and adventure landscapes. It might also mean that PC's eternal souls might well be denied their eternal rewards allowing the Revenant PC class that FH&W to come into play or the other version of these characters from the Gong Farmer's Almanac to come out to play for Dungeon Crawl Classics.
But there's more to the issue then simply allowing a megadungeon to go plunking down across space and time. Chaos could well be spreading its seed across the post apocalyptic landscape as well as the fantasy one. The spawn of Hell could easily turn up as part of the landscape allowing the implementation of  many of the options of races to be a sign of the taint of the landscape. The powers of  Hell itself can easily manipulate entire generations of adventurers into doing their bidding through the various locations a fact that DM's should take full advantage of. But Hell should be very dangerous, unpredictable, and never ever something PC's should really be familiar with. More on that tomorrow!

All of the various rpg and retroclone systems mentioned copyrights and respective trade marks belong to their owners. Jack Kirby, Etrigan the Demon belong to their trademark & copy right holders no violation or infringement has been implied. This blog post is for educational and entertainment purposes only.
The term 'Pulp Hell' is trade marked and copyrighted to Dark Corner Productions & Eric Fabiaschi the author. This copyright and trademark extends to the Warlord of the Outer Worlds campaign setting and the Accursed Atlantis setting as well. All rights reserved.

Where Tim Went Wrong and Right. Witches, Chaos, Cults, And Witchcraft In Old School Retroclone Campaigns

I've been following Tim Brannan's blog now for many months and he's been doing some very nice Fantastic Heroes and Witchery posts and talking about mixing in Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. He's going to try and smooth out some of the rough edges of  Fantastic Heroes and Witchery with the pseudo historic wonderfulness of Dark Albion from the mighty pen of +Kasimir Urbanski's aka RPGPundit's in his latest book Dark Albion: The Rose War. For the better part of  over a month I've been looking into Dark Albion's demonic and chaotic foundations. And I think that's where Tim is missing some vital information. He's done some damn fine posts about FH&W  All of these very solid posts can be found right over HERE, HERE & right over HERE. 
  Which brings up the point here, FH&W's implied lack of a cleric goes to the heart of the nature of Chaos in the rule book. Chaos in Fantastic Heroes and Witchery is all things of Hell, the Abyss, and Chaos. Occultists walk indeed a very fine line and a razor's edge in the game one to which can indeed cut the throat of the very expert in Magick as its implied in the book. Fantastic Heroes and Witchery takes grave pains to wear its Gothic pedigree on its sleeve especially in regards to its conventions towards Hell and the powers of Chaos especially within its spells. The six hundred and sixty six spells have had great pains by the author to have them modified to fit his world view of the corrupting and dangerous nature of Chaos. A view that is both shared by me and Kasimir Urbanski. Dark Albion presents a very solid pseudo historical  structure for its view of Hell, Chaos and its Demons. This is not so much based on a refinement of actual history but a blending of occult fictional tradition, historical ideas, and mythological conceits wrapped in very rich game setting.


And that's really part of the problem with mixing and matching some of these sources, Lord knows I've been wrestling with this problem ever since I received Dark Albion. Tim Brannan's style is the mixing and matching of these styles of games according to him:
'Another point of commonality is Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. I wanted to use it as a game system for both Dark Albion and my witch adventures.  I think it would work out well.  I need to find locales in "Dark" Europe for all of these adventures.'

What time's not getting is very dark and dangerous nature of Dark Albion, AS&SH, along with FH&W. These games are not so much D&D as they are Gothic pulp sword and sorcery wrapped in the seeming tropes of D&D. Rpgpundit went through a very carefully contrived blog entry regarding demons, cults, and chaos worship in Dark Albion :
'Regarding Chaos worship, some people have asked just what a Chaos-cult in Albion should look like.  Now the thing is, the particular manifestations of Chaos-worship in the setting ought to be extremely varied. Law is One, Chaos is Legion. So I don't think there's a lot of uniform things you can say about it. There are heretical subversive cults that appear to worship the Unconquered Sun (like the Cathari), there are secret 'satanic'-style sects, lone would-be witches venerating some dark thing in the woods, there was Bishop Peacock's sect that looked like a regular church congregation on the outside but they were preparing to open a gate to hell in the old Arcadian catacombs, there are of course the Frogmen and their Frog-Gods. So the answer is that the main thing a GM should try to do with Chaos-cults is not make any two look too similar to one another; this is of course a great detail if you choose to focus on a game of chaos-hunters (for example, of a party being sponsored by the Clerical order). Even so, there's a good list of references from the details in the gazetteer and chronology as to provide a GM with ideas of what Chaos cults can look like.
With demons, the whole system for demon-summoning, and the details thereof are explicit in the game.  The system is based on the actual medieval ideas on demon-summoning, from grimoires like the Goetia.  Demons come in different ranks (corresponding to their level of power), that human beings have labelled as though they were mortal titles: knights, counts, dukes, princes, etc.
The medieval magicians did not believe that summoning demons was necessarily an evil act; if you could control and bind them in the name of divine forces (in this case, the Unconquered Sun), then evil could be used for good purposes (naturally, non-magicians would have a hard time being able to tell if that was the case and would be highly paranoid about the whole business regardless).  Suitably bound, they could then be obliged to offer a service or deal with a problem in exchange for being released back from whence they came.  But it is also possible to end up making a pact with a demon, if one was inclined to the service of Chaos, where the demon would provide certain gifts in exchange for the magician's loyalty.  I did write a little about the kind of gifts Demons can offer: the permanent use of any of that demon's special powers, magic items, access to spell knowledge for magic-users, etc. But again, I didn't want to get too specific here so as not to be restrictive. In short, what is offered will be defined by what the magician wants, and what the demon has the power to give (and yes, there are clear guidelines as to what any given demon is capable of doing).' You can read the whole thing right over HERE And that's part of the very issue of using witches from Dark Albion, magick in the setting can and could be tied into demon summoning along with its attendant issues. Tim also talks about, 'I can take the occultist class and make it into a passable Occult Poet.' Why not simply use the bard class from AS&SH as a compliment as well?
This brings up the role of Chaos, & the Witch in AS&SH. The witch is a class in the game that can serve a very wide variety of purposes and roles in the game. Though tied to the world of Hyperborea by the class's very nature, the witch is perhaps in my mind tied to and linked with adventurers in a way that beckons adventurers into the very fabric of AS&SH. They can be and should be used as the glue that ties both cults and covens in the setting together. Chaos is in the mix for AS&SH but its the Chaos of classic mythology and otherworldly Lovecraftian horror and not so much of the Infernal or is it? Well its actually both. There are the classic demons of AD&D and OGL fare but also the rolling sanity wrenching weirdness of the Lovecraftian multidimensional murderverse laying in wait for the witch or wizard of AS&SH.


By using the three of these products together one gets the best strengths of all three as long as the DM remembers the conceil that these are Gothic/Pulp games at their heart and are  more then the sum of their parts. Tim's idea is killer with some real teeth to it:
'One thing I always wanted to do was run a dark age WitchCraft RPG game.  Set in the 1600s it would deal with rival factions of the Gifted fighting each other while Europe descends into the Burning Times.  It struck me how close that idea was some things I was also planning in my War of the Witch Queens adventures.'
In point of fact what I actually think could be run using Dark Albion and its Hellish powers as its base is in point of fact a Solomon Kane style campaign with bits and pieces borrowed from AS&SH and Fantastic Heroes and Witchery but the balance is very tricky.


At its heart and soul here in this style of campaign are the pulp sword and sorcery forces of the party and the forces of Hell and the demons all waiting to tear a ragged straight razor across the throat of the party. Does Tim have a fantastic idea? Absolutely but these rpg systems can be very tricky to use together. The key is balance and planning when working with these forces.

Reviewing The Dark Albion Setting & Sourcebook PDF By Rpg Pundit & Dominique Crouzet For Any New School, Old School, or Retroclone Campaign Rpg System Part II

When we start to dive beneath the surface of the Dark Albion book we are looking into a world defined by two things the weight of its history and the violence of its society. Dark Albion is an dark fantasy world gone very wrong, a place where the magic and mythology  of the world has begun to wane and the dark claws of chaos grip the dark heart of this England. Read part I of this review HERE . All set against the backdrop of the War of the Roses. And all of the while Chaos and Hell wait to end it all! The Church of the Unconquered Sun does its level best to eradicate it where it rears its head, often times by burning the infection of the infernal to the ground. This isn't D&D or any of its tropes at all. Here wizards and mages are working by their wits and your warriors better be born into a station where you can affect the world. Because the nobles are doing their level best to turn the Heraldic badges  of  The Red Rose of the House of Lancaster and  The White Rose of the House of York  into a chess board of blood, guts, and slaughter with someone claiming not only the throne but the very core of this world's England. Every little area of this England is fleshed out in such a way as to encourage adventure and breath life into the locations of  Dark Albion. And this book's pdf  is filled with wall to wall maps of adventure locations but there is very little here of fantasy adventures of a D&D style game. Because this is world of intrigue,violence, and hellish terror. The Church of the Unconquered Sun is a monolithic slab of an institution waiting to bring the hammer down hard on the head of witchcraft, magick, and Chaos in spades. The question is will your party be the nail or the hammer? The War of the Roses will determine that. For your social standing, status, and indeed your family honor is all at stake in this setting. So are your very lives. 

 
The Law and Justice section of Dark Albion leaves little doubt as to the thumb print of this world's Rome in my mind. Its bloody and vile hand prints are all over this chapter and the ins and outs of crime and punishment are dark, swift and horrid. The echoes of real world his are all over this chapter. Make no mistake, your PC's screw up in this world and its the stake or worse for them.

 The Europe of  the Dark Albion setting is given lots of detail in this pdf, we get an overview of a darkly strange world that borrows from the Gothic horror tradition but doesn't emulate to any fair degree.The terrors and mythology are once again twistings  of our own history but given far more depth to create the illusion of adventure just waiting around every dark corner and the roads of travelers beset with adventure.

Grab the Dark Albion pdf  Right Over  HERE

One might think that dealing with Dark Albion would be like diving into the deep end of a very long and boring history class from an alternative world? No the history chapter is devided into Albion today and the historical traces of this world's setting of the War of the Roses and where PC's can fit in. The Characters In Albion chapter is especially nice because it twists the usual tropes of PC creation with Dark Albion specific details such as backgrounds, PC life events, changes to the existing D&D style PC classes and the changes borne of Dark Albion, and more with an unusual flare for bringing all of the details together under one roof.
 Note that Scots take the place of  the usual Dwarves in Dark Albion with some heavy twists along with the Cymri taking the half Elven race but again with some distinctly original twists all brought into the supernatural world of this setting. Some of the detail can seem a bit overwhelming but the author handles it with gratis and style all of their own.
Currency & Equipment is well done and extensive with rules effected once again by social standing, wealth, social norms and mores as well as more. As a DM your going to want to have the PC's be well of and of noble blood or else things might be complicated for them. This is a personal observation and things might vary but according to the Currency and Economy chapter:
"On the other end of the spectrum, the aristocracy has vast lands, knights and soldiers, and influence in the courts, but may actually have little in the way of liquid assets (though there are certainly exceptions). They trade as much or more on their reputation and ‘push’ in government as they do in money. The royal family itself is NOT rich at this time by the standard of the nobility, having drained the nations coffers over the last fifty years in failed wars against the frogmen, and now on the recruiting of armies to fight the Rose War. Both Yorkists and Lancastrians depend on the wealth of powerful and rich noble families like the Nevilles, or even wealthy commoner merchants like William Canynge.
So if you are going to reflect the Albion setting’s economy accurately, player characters may often engage in exchanges for goods or services not based on coin-derived purchases at all."  Once again the events of the War take center stage and this is one more reason why the hard and gritty feel of the book reminds me of a good episode of a Game of Thrones but with firearms and deadly politics can lead to PC's needing to take sides and looking out for their own interests as well. Everything from arms, equipment, to horses is all in this extensive chapter and there is plenty of hooks here to add in a bit of adventure and intrigue into buying equipment.
Noble houses of Albion goes into an overview of  the major events, players, parties, and back dealings of the War of the Roses of Albion and what its direct impact is on your PC's lives. DM need to pay special attention to this chapter because of the very nature of this book's setting history isn't simply background in this campaign but center stage and living. Important People of Interest lays out the impact of these power movers and shaker NPC's into the scale of the campaign's history. And just as in real life these are people of power, violence, and history with the power of life and death at their finger tips and around each others throats. This chapter charts out the relationships and bloodlines of each & everyone of them. The artwork is especially well used here to suggest and show the power struggles of Dark Albion.
 Sorcery and Secrets goes through the magick, mysteries, and dark sorcery of the setting. Magick here is fraught with power and pure danger. The Church is intertwined with the dark nature of Chaos itself from which all magick springs. If you are expecting the spell slingers and wizards of D&D, forget it. These are the wizards and witches of the witch trials, the men and women of a dark and far more sinister nature. These are the dark reflection of the light of the Unconquered Sun and they are ritualistic casters  of the darkest sorts. The church views them as such and they do indeed summon demons, work from within the foundations of Dark Albion and twist reality sometimes for good but most often for bad. Chaos in this game setting is a losing proposition in spades. Witches, demon summoners, wizards, gamble with their very souls and they do it for the sheer supernatural darkness of it. Once again your social standing will actually affect your PC's ability to cast a spell. Demons are indeed powerful, dangerous, and infernal in every sense of the word, they really are the corruption of Hell itself and waiting at the threshold to drag your PC's soul into the Abyss.
Magic Item creation is rarely practiced, dangerous, and horribly prone to have dangerous things happen. Poison or worse could happen from potion creation, and with a low magic setting this is very dangerous indeed. There are several artifacts and relics listed along with their mythology but these are items of myth and legend requiring quests and missions of dark aspect. For this will require venturing into the mists of adventure and foreign lands at the edge of Albion. The rules for Alchemy round out this chapter and their well put together with some nice systems built into this source book. They give just enough for PC's to add a bit more of the esoteric to their backgrounds should they be of appropriate station.
Adventuring on Dark Albion gives the PC's a chance to get into the wider world of the setting with lots of guidance and wisdom for the DM to pull the players into the deep end of the setting with bandits, weirdness, and random encounters adding not only colour but a solid system for the DM to introduce the world of Dark Albion's adventures. This is one of my favorite chapters because it clearly outlines and highlights the dark mythic and legendary of this world. Magick and myth are or have faded from the world but its not gone yet nor will it ever. Here the mythological aspects of Dark Albion are holding on with tooth and claw for dear life. We get a sense in this chapter of the depth and breath of the history of the legends of Dark Albion and sheer volume of what lurks on the fringes of England and Europe waiting to tear apart PC's. There's maps, NPC's, adventure hooks, world building bits, adventure locations a plenty, and much more all living side by side with the world of the War of the Roses. The whole thing reads like an alternative world darkly with a knife to its own throat waiting for PC's to stumble into into it. You have burrow crawling, dark Fey remains,twisted festivals, weird customs, odd happenings, and your PC's are smack in the middle of it as victims, victors, and fools all being pulled into the setting by it all. There is a boat load of maps right in the middle of this chapter, and again artwork galore.
This chapter is one of the most important to Dark Albion and really showcases the setting as well as the inherit violence of the setting's England and Europe. There is so much to take in that a new DM might want to look through this chapter as much  an overview of what can be done with Dark Albion as much as a DM's adventure tool box. This chapter is really part of the soul of this book and its very well done. Worth the price of admission as well.
The Appendixes add in that last dollop of icing on the wedding cake of Dark Albion. You get The Knights of the Star & Secrets of the Clerical Orders this chapter goes into Order of the Royal Star is the foremost order of knights in the land of Albion and its inner workings and secrets. Very interesting stuff I can assure you as we are brought into some of the inner workings of this organization's past and its role in the War today!
Appendix P Rpg Pundit's Quick and Dirty House Rules, these are rules for use with the lighter OSR games. According to the book, "house rules are intended for use with the lighter OSR games, typically Swords & Wizardry or Lamentations of the Flame Princess, or even Basic-Fantasy-RPG." And these rules are well suited for what they do and how this game is a setting universal OSR book. These are solidly done allowing the fighting-man, cleric, magic-user, and sometimes thief to enter the world of Dark Albion. It has modifications for and of currency, equipment, weapons, etc. all for these OSR and original edition games.
Finally rounding out Dark Albion is Appendix three for the Fantastic Heroes and Witchery rpg system, this chapter is a mini gaming source book for adapting FH&W to Dark Albion. And it does a damn good job of it, this chapter builds upon the foundation of the previous material laid out in the Dark Albion setting book. We get eight new PC classes along with notes about using some of the other FH&W classes with Dark Albion. Guidelines for Dark Albion being a low magic setting, chances of spell failure, and the dangers of sorcery. Both of which are optional guideline rules. A simple cosmology of Dark Albion put into Fantastic Hereos and Witchery terms and rules. And finally new spells from the rich dark fantasy setting Dark Albion.


So bottom line is Dark Albion worth your money? In a word for the PDF, yes if your looking for a dark, gritty, rich, fantasy world of the War of The Roses. This is a labor of love by two authors who spent a great deal of time and energy on a project that must have taken years. The sheer volume of detail in this source book is over whelming in a good way, this is a very well produced and satifying OSR source book. Solidly done with tons of artwork, background, details, mystery, magick, and adventure ready for the taking by a party of adventurers in this dark alternative England.  This is one very well written and exciting adventure settings to have had the pleasure to review and read. Here is a source book worth of the War of the Roses with all of the adventure, romance, blood shed,violence, and more that one would come to expect from these authors.  It's already selling on Drivethru rpg and the hardback is up on Lulu as we speak and on Amazon as well.  A dark variant cover of the setting book is available from Lulu as well, this is my favorite cover of Dark Albion.  And within the next few weeks I'll be buying this one.

Two Free New OSR Character Class Resources For The Fantastic Heroes and Witchery Rpg System & Your Old School Campaigns

Grab Them For Free Right Over
HERE

There's two brand new free awesome character class resources for the Fantastic Heroes and Witchery rpg system. First there's a brand new awesome Excel style PC character sheet for the game. They don't come any better. All of the nifty little details are right at the players finger tips. The second release is character class extravaganza with a plethora of new character classes and some related variations of some of the classics old school classic PC classes.
Fantastic Heroes and Witchery is a game with a ton of creator supported material and the author makes it hard not to grab a hold of his vision and simply go with it.
According to  Dominique Crouzet :
Today are released two new files, available on my website for free download!

1) An awesome character sheet for Microsoft Excel kindly given to us by Arne Holzwarth. Thanks a lot for this excellent work: see download file #4.

2) A free 20 pages document with 11 classes to use in FH&W. This is a major update and expansion of a former document that proposed 4 classes based on more accurately converted classes. As you know, many FH&W classes strongly depart from the originals (e.g. bard and ranger without spells; paladins that are but knights with a few holy powers, etc.). So, here you have 11 classes that look much closer to the originals for thse who need/want them, but still with a FH&W twist (e.g. the Swan Maiden class, or the Wizard of High Arcana).

The sheer volume of support material for the game is both staggering and sort of inspiring. Very cool stuff to see coming out the Fantastic Heroes and Witchery campaign. Thanks for the major updates and expansions! 

Fantastic Heroes & Witchery (hardcover) By Dominique Crouzet Shipped !

Grab It Right
HERE

For months I've been watching this particular retro clone for months now and have wanted a copy. So I finally ordered a copy of this from Lulu. I've read the various reviews of it and a couple of days ago I got a chance to check it out.
 So this is now on its way. I can't wait to get the hard copy!

 Here's the description from Lulu - 

(This is the hardcover version of the book.) - This version 2.1 has been proofread (though some typos might remain), and more than 70 spells have been rewritten (so as to be somewhat different) and/or renamed. A couple of illustrations have been changed too.

This 430 pages old-school RPG is compatible with most adventures, monsters, spells, etc., published for other retro-clones and simulacrums of the game (i.e. fantasy RPG of fighters, wizards, dragons, and underground adventures), but proposes a lot of options, such as talents, combat schools... or classes, races and rules for science fantasy games with laser guns, etc.