Some OSR Thoughts On James Ward's Greyhawk Adventures & Castles & Crusades

 If there's one book that a DM has to have if their going to run Greyhawk in the minds of many players of AD&D or Castles & Crusades. It has to be James Ward's Greyhawk Aventures! Why?! Because of the fact that Greyhawk Adventures expands Greyhawk of course! Expands upon the dieties, the monsters, Hall of Heroes places, persons, & things of Greyhawk, huge nimber of magical spells, new Greyhawk magic items, the geography of Oerth, adventures on Greyhawk, zero level PC options & available customization, and a Greyhawk spell list. 

So while all of this is packed into here running Greyhawk with Castles & Crusades is going to be a bit of a challenge. Greyhawk Adventures helps a ton because it gives the dungeon master the first real expansion on Greyhawk since the classic box set. 

Greyhawk is the down & dirty fantasy Europe that never existed & yet its influence within modern campaigns is still felt. Forgotten Realms might get all of the credit as one of the most influencal campaign settings. But its Greyhawk that has such a devoted following. Geyhawk still retains its cult following as the oriinal iconic campaign setting unto itself. And Greyhawk Adventures follws right there the original box set's footing. The adventures within? The adventures are easily adaptable to your own campaign settings. 

What about the Castles & Crusades rpg system? Depending upon Greyhawk era & local setting C&C adapts quite easily with Jim Ward's Greyhawk adventures. The rounded out campaign elements of Greyhawk Adventures can easily be molded by the DM to their Greyhawk campaigns. This is one of the strengths of the classic era TSR AD&D first edition books. 

Greyhawk works for C&C because of its scope, adaptability, and use as a campaign world that fits your world campaign. The potenial there is to take the classic Greyhawk folio & using Greyhawk Adventures to mold the fluff to fit your own worlds of adventure. The reason why this works is that Greyhawk Adventures is a tool kit of adventure elements that can be added or subtracted from as needed in your C&C campaign world. 

                                           

The Horror In Time - Timelines & Alternative 2d6 Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg Campaign Action

 ".the basis of the fear was a horrible elder race of half-polypous, utterly alien entities which had come through space from immeasurably distant universes and had dominated the earth and three other solar planets about 600 million years ago. „
 ~ HPL , The Shadow Out Of Time

This blog post is going to pick right up from here. We know that the flying polyps caused the mass extinction of a huge number of species at various early stages in  time on Earth. This is  according to HP Lovecraft's The Shadow Out of Time. The flying polyps those Lovecraftian horrors finished off anything that crossed their paths in past epochs. According to the H.P. Lovecraft wiki; "Around 70 million years ago (during the Cretaceous era), the Polyps rose from their subterranean haunts to exact revenge by exterminating the Yithians in one fell swoop." They lost because the Yithian's minds had alreay jumped ahead in time according to the novella. 
But this leaves quite a few more  questions then answers. Dire questions of mass extinction events going back to the formation of the Earth. Everyone thinks that Cthulhu & it's ilk are the worst. But the flying polyps may be the real home grown alien  horrors that lurk on the fringes of Earth's solar system. 
In the 2d6 time travel rpg Empire of Time there are a number of alien life forms from the very early stages of Earth. These races know fear through the very thought of the polyp monsters lurking just below Earth's surface. 

Why have the slave trading time traveling empire woven their agents throughout history into every organization, guild, club, etc. they can?! Simply to empire build across the time & space contiuum? No, that's wasteful or have they done it out of sheer desparation?! They know of a few fixed points in time where the polyps have done their dirty work but not all. The Yithians may have kept exacting records but they didn't leave backdoors so that the polyps could find them. Our slave traders may have found a few answers & their not sharing with the rest of the time travelers. But the Yithians are the masters of time travel & deep time, their not the nicest of the alien races that Lovecraft created. And even their scared of the flying polyps. The Yithians abandoned thier own timeline to the polyps after holding them at bay for millions of years. 
Imagine that time travel drives are invented & this event triggers the reawakening of the flying polyps. Why?! Because of the fact that the Yithians machinations of time travel may have attracted the flying polyps in the first place. And things went from bad to worse. So do the PC's stand any chance against these horrors?! In the short term yes & in the long term no. They can destroy the polyps with electrical weaponry ala Yithians. We're talking about an alien species that can sleep for millions of years, whose numbers are unknown, and whose agenda we don't really even understand. 
The fact is that if the flying polyps have colonies & cities below the sands of Mars. A time traveling mission maybe to save the time colonists on Mars before the polyps wake up! Outpost Mars may become more then a casual rpg template. The real horror begins to awaken.

They're coming down off the walls! - Greyhawk Castles & Crusades Mixed session report II

 So tonight's DM Steve game saw me step from behind the screen once again & get a chance to play Castles & Crusades. This game session report is going to pick right up from last blog post here.  We took up positions amid ruined columns & debris at the bottom of this dungeon. 

And as we were taking stock of our situation one of the idio erm adventurers wanted to light a torch in the middle of this dungeon. Already we'd seen evidence of orc inhabitation & caught sight of goblin activity in the area near us. Namely discarded & broken arrows with lots of human blood on them. Never a good sign. We did light the torches & my God I'm sorry we did! The walls of this former ruin were literally crawling with goblins! They were lightly armored, armed with short bows, and daggers! And there were hundreds of them! 
And that's when we decided to run! That's right we ran like our lives depened upon it with torches in the dark until we reached a door. It was unlocked! We took the opportunity to bolt in then take stock of the situation after we bolted the door. We were quiet,very quiet in point of fact. Checked the store room we found ourselves in for traps, rats, extra. But it was an ordinary store room with a couple of skeletons with in it. We quickly separated heads from bodies & quietly separated the bones. Then looked around for giant rats! Fortunately there wasn't a single one! Whar we found were extra arrows, sling stones, etc. left behind by the former adventurers whose skeletons we found. 
As everyone else was taking stock of the room, my PC listened at the door. Experience in DM Steve's campagin had taught us well. There had to be a fresh water source nearby to support the goblin population & their orc or hob masters. And that's when I heard something big just outside the door. We extinuished the totches. And our cleric silently prayed to her gods. 

Jusr outside the door I heard the heavy foot falls of the monster and what seemed like thousands of tinier foot falls joining it. We stayed put for almost an hour as the sounds passed the door again & again. The door was baracaded by this time as we quietly handed ruined furnature & debris to block the door temporarily. 
When the coast was clear we left & moved into one of the side hall ways off the main ruin's hall. And we figured out our problem we landed smack into a goblin nest site! This ruin was two former buildings that had crashed into each other & the halls were actually in the other building. That's when we heard the shrill voices of some creatures with the shadows of torchlight coming our way down the hall. Again we ducked into another room until the orc patrol passed!
I got a chance to get a good look at these orcs & their armor, weapons, etc. were all in good repair. They wore armor similar but not quite the same as the goblins! We've got a series of well orgnized goblins, orcs, hobbs, and hobgoblins all armed to the teeth. This whole affair was making  me as a player very nervous. 
So I pulled the other players aside on smoke break and told them my theory that we needed to get out of here fast. There were way too much activity that screamed goblin hive and orc overseers! And we weren't finding anything to contradicted this! 
We rouned the next hallway corner and came face to face with a hobb along his 4 goblin henchmen. We didn't want to face down a raging hobgoblin strong man with hormone issues. I mainaged a lucky roll doing damage to his back with my daggers! And that's when it became pile up on the hobb & his henchmen. 
After combat we looted the bodies & talked about how rich they were which was worrisome! Why?! Because there had been other adventurers down here. 

Thoughts & Impressions On First Read Through of The 4th Edition Morrow Project rpg From Timeline Ltd.

 "When it appeared nuclear war was inevitable, a clandestine project was considered and launched. Hundreds of citizens and experts with specific skills would be cryogenically frozen in hidden boltholes around the world. A few years after the End of the World, these people would then be released to help rebuild the world. Complications arose, and the first of these enclaves were instead released nearly 150 years in the future. And contact has been lost with the other enclaves. Can this small crew exist and survive in a world they no longer recognize? Can the world still be saved?"

So almost a week back I contacted the Timeline Ltd. folks about the Morrow Project rpg. And just incase you don't know the history of the Morrow Project rpg here's the short synoisis from the Morrow Project Wiki entry; "The Morrow Project is a science fiction role-playing game created by Kevin Dockery, Robert Sadler and Richard Tucholka and published by TimeLine Limited. It is set after a devastating nuclear war. It was first released in the 1980s, and it still has a loyal following. The fourth edition was released as of December 15, 2013 by Chris Garland, the head of Timeline Limited." 
What came in the drivethrurpg link from the Morrow Project facebook group was a mamoth 330 page monster! This wasn't the game that came across the table top in 1980! Instead this is a whole cloth behemoth classic. Let me explain, the Fourth edition of the Morrow Project is possibly one of the most customizable post apocalpytic rpg that has crossed my desk. Yes, the classic Morrow Project background is there & yes the bulk of the setting is there plus more; "One hundred and fifty years after the fall of civilization, the members of the Morrow Project wake to a changed world. Without the modern transit and communications infrastructures, distances that once took hours, now take weeks, and news that once traveled in milliseconds now takes months to arrive, if ever. This new world is characterized by tiny hamlets of simple daily existence awash in a sea of barbarism and anarchy. The Morrow Project could not prevent the coming catastrophe, nor did they have the resources to help everyone immediately. It was possible to help with the rebuilding, but even this was a massive undertaking. Plan became action and over the years many well-trained teams were cryogenically frozen in hidden bunkers to emerge at the time when their resources and help could do the most good. Intended to be part of an organized plan to rebuild America, your team finds that they have missed the 3-5 year expected wake-up call. Now, far outside the original time frame and unable to contact the rest of the project, they must start alone the process that was intended for thousands. Isolated in a world where the war is only a distant legend, your team must rely on their ingenuity, training and each other to carry out the general orders of the project: 1. Assist the population in rebuilding America whenever possible. 2. Reunite with the bulk of the Morrow Project forces. 3. Survive! The Morrow Project may be played with nothing other than this book, dice, paper and pencil. Included in this book are full details on Morrow Project teams, vehicles, equipment, modern weapons, complete medical details, people and creatures living in the post-holocaust world, and more." This blurb comes from the back of the Morrow Project book. 

 So all this is within fourth edition Morrow Project. But there's so much more then what was thought to be in the book as I remember it. Morrow Project is a savage post apocalytic rpg with the DM deciding how, where, & why the apocalpytic events will touch the US 150 years down the road when your party wakes up from hypersleep. The Morrow project itself & its background is still intact but man, the rpg has become a very detailed post apocalpytic rpg tool kit. Chris Morrell states the aims of the fourth edition of the Morrow Project right in the introduction; "My aim, even from that fi rst meeting to discuss the re-write, was to establish a system that tightly meshed both rule sets together, and produced something new. Gone were the D20 tables, and most of the other dice types. Instead everything was based upon 1D100 and 4D6. We had new Ability scores, permitting a more rounded character. The core mechanism of rolling under a score that is a product of an Ability Score x 2 plus any skill, borrows inspiration from the old 2nd edition D&D NWP. The degrees of success mechanism had already been used in another game I was writing, and had its infl uences from a conversation I had had with Steve Perrin the original author of Runequest. The doubles as critical or fumble rule was, I thought, new. I was later to fi nd that it had been thought of before."

The Morrow Project rpg that I remembered is here but there's far more too it now & that's a good thing. Paramilitary & post apocalytic rpging is a niche within a niche of the rpg hobby & the Morrow Project fits this niche incredibly well. But with that come certain challenges & that includes finding the right group of players willing to take the gamble on such a game. The combat is incredibly lethal for this system & the reality of the rpg is very detailed. Even more so then say classic Twilight 2000 or the gonzo nature of Gamma World. Survival within the Morrow Project's campaign setting is going to take team work. Solid gaming & a very well thought plan on the part of a party of PC's.  All of the classics to take out your PC are here danger,  disease, radiation, fallout, & other humans ( some of the most dangerous things to encounter are other people), etc. And yet the reward of survival, thriving in the wasteland that was America, and helping to rebuild civilization is all a part of the Morrow Project. 
Many folks in the OSR talk about adult gaming & realism the Morrow Project provides that in spades. The world is super detailed as you make it. Are the little booklets that you remember from 1980 still here? Umm no instead we get a complete survival at all costs & a balls to the wall classic in the Morrow Project fourth edition. Five out of five for me as both DM & Morrow Project gamer. 

Harvest Moon - Turquoise Valley By David Woodrum From Fish Wife Games & The Clement Sector Rpg Campaign Update

So for tonight's Clement Sector rpg session I needed a town & not just any town but one that double as a small colony station for use with the Rider rpg New Liberty setting. Enter David Woodrum's Turquoise Valley which just so happens to be in my que on Drivethrurpg. 

" Built just outside of copper mining territory, Turquoise Valley enjoyed enough early success to allow the community to grow into a thriving little prairie town. Though still prosperous, there are signs that the economy is starting to slow down. Mayor McCarty has dreams of using his connection to the railroad company to establish a new train station in town. Being linked up to western railroad expansion is what the mayor believes will allow the community to survive and grow into a small city."

"Not everyone shares the mayor’s vision. Business entrepreneur Jacob Hound seeks to gain majority control over Turquoise Valley’s economic interests and these plans would further limit his influence. Mr. Hound’s business investments are doing just fine without such growth and the entrepreneur would love run Mr. McCarty out of town and assume the role of mayor. Unfortunately for Mayor McCarty his rival Mr. Hound has a few supporters in Turquoise Valley who are not afraid to dish out a few dirty deeds…"

Turquoise Valley’s economic interests & its positioning as an up & coming colony asset for the World of New Liberty makes it perfect to drag & drop into the Clement Sector's Rider settting. Why because of the fact that the Clement Sector is the new frontier in the black. 

So in tonight's game the PC's are investigating the disappearance of miners just outside of Turquoise Valley. The town doctor has asked the PC's to investigate the local mine & has brought the PC's into town on his dime. Their staying at his spread just outside of town. The PC's were shown the dried & mummified  bodies of the miner's corpses. Nathan Cobb of Cobb's Drug Store has been helping the local doctor & the other newer  colonists. The sand mutants have been rendering the corpses of the miners down for valuable nutrients & other materials. 

 What the PC's don't know is the fact that sand mutants have been taking exception to the miners tunneling into their lair. The sand mutant use an armored recycle suit to move around on the surface of New Liberty.  
The Sand Mutants # Appearing 1d6 
7/15, Move 10m, Armor 2, Mace or Staff  (melee 2D damage) or Bow (ranged 2D damage). Physical-3, Survival-2. Infravision, light sensitivity. Random trinket. 

The twist is that the Sand Mutants are actually the original colonists of New Liberty who through one of the radioactive storms of New Liberty were transformed into the Sand Mutants. That was 50 years ago & there's now their back to seek to revenge against the town. Turquoise Valley By David Woodrum From Fish Wife Games gives just enough information to allow the DM to insert this Old Western setting into their own campaigns. At twelve pages there's just enough to use for your games & its very easy to use. 

The Mythological Tarasconus For Your Old School Adventures & Campaigns

 " The Tarasque is a fearsome legendary dragon-like mythological hybrid from Provence, in southern France, tamed in stories about Saint Martha, such as the one told in Jacobus de Voragine's Golden Legend (13th century)."

The tarasque was described as having a lion-like head, a body protected by turtle-like carapace(s), six feet with bear-like claws, and a scaly tail like a serpent's tail in a text (pseudo-Marcelle or pseudo-Marcella) which is similar to and roughly coeval with the Golden Legend, and issued poison breath according to one hagiography (pseudo-Raban Maur) of perhaps somewhat later date."

No. Enc.: 0 (1d3) Alignment: Chaotic  Movement: Swim: 90’ (30’) Armor Class: 5 Hit Dice:  15  Attacks:4 Claw, Claw, Tail Sting, Breath Weapon  Damage: 2d6 Claw Strike, 3d6 Tail Sting, Breath Weapon  4d6 4 Times A Day, Dung Fling 2d6 Acidic Damage  3 times A Day Save: L4 Morale: 8 Horde Class: H 

The Tarasque (Latin: Tarasconus) was said to have come from Galatia, a cross-breed between the biblical Leviathan and the legendary Onachus (or onacho, or bonacho^[c][d]) of Galatia, this onachus being a creature that retaliated against pursuers by flinging its dung (Latin: stercus) like an arrow, and causing burns. 

A huge dragon, half animal, half fish... fatter than a bull, longer than a horse, it had the face and head of a lion, teeth sharp as swords, the mane of a horse, a back that was hatchet-sharp with bristly scales keen as augers, six feet with bear-like claws, the tail of a serpent, and a double shield/carapace, like a tortoise's, on each side.

A terrible dragon of unbelievable length and great bulk. It breathed out poisonous fumes, shot sulfurous flames from its eyes, and emitted fierce hissings with its mouth and horrible noises with its curved teeth. With its talons and teeth it tore to pieces anyone who crossed its path; with its poisonous breath it killed anyone who came too near.

The Tarasconus was a product of the Pre Biblical Flood & is a  creature of absolute malice & Chaos. The dragon like horror is capable of devouring the flesh of anyone that crosses its path. And will attack with its deadly claws at the first chance it gets devouring horse and rider easily. The Tarasconus has the ability to breath out poisonous fumes four times per day devestating plant life, flesh, and anything else that it comes into contact with it. The way to heal from this breath weapon is to use a  only remove curse spell  and magical healing has any chance of healing anyone caught in its wake. The Tarasconus will also fling its offal at anyone trying to pursue it on horse back or in a body of water. The offal is highly acidic causing horrid burns to any metal or  exposed flesh. The Tarasconus is known to destory entire cities, towns, and other urban areas out of a sheerly evil nature. The Tarasconus has reproduced due to the mating with certain undisclosed infernal dragons. There is gossip in certain occult circles that Tiamat or her mates were involved in these matters. 

The Tarasconus can be cast out by a cleric of 7th level or better but only a saint can cow the monster due its semi infernal nature. These monsters are often released by the Chaos gods to sew discord on the prime material plane 

In The Ashen Desert Caper- Greyhawk Castles & Crusades Mixed session report

 

During tonight's Castles & Crusades rpg campaign put out by DM Steve, the forever DM myself got a chance to slip from behind the screen to play Asrog The Thief a 6th level PC. The C&C  game setting takes place on the world of Greyhawk where the Warden of Metamorphis Alpha rpg fame has crashed! And the world is one of Sword & Superscience but at a price. The Rain of Colorless Fire was actually the Warden hitting Greyhawk! The world is thrown into other utter chaos & our party of adventurers is in the middle of this trying to make sense of it all 200 years after the event. 

Our party is in the employ of a wealthy merchant prince whose obsessed with collecting the remains of what fell from the sky. Or so he thinks. We've a party of seven for tonight's game & my poor thief has been put into the midst of a knight, a paladin, two fighters, a cleic, a smarmy wizard, and a Dwarven warrior. The Dwarf my thief gets along with & we've been traveling for many days after buying a map from a gnome clan of cartographers & explorers. The dungeon is a series of ruins just jutting up from the sands.
The sands have been fused into green golden glass that we passed by & were attacked by 3 glass elementals. The elemental energies are extremely strong here. The warriors pounded on the 3 glass elementals & finally our wizard fire balled the lot! The ruins were a series of low slung buildings or at least they were. After a bit of searching we managed to find an iron wrought door. Checking for traps my PC was able to avoid a needle trap! After picking the lock the door quietly opened!? Why would a door to a dungeon open easily unleas it was maintained! I got one of my daggers out just in case after descending into the darkness on a rope  with only a torch & my daggers forprotection. There were voices from down below! 
A quick series of  tugs on the rope above & I extinguished the torch. Now with the rest of the warriors coming down the rope I moved swiftly to get to the bottom of the ruins.All around us was debris from orc inhabitation. They are after all descended from demonic pigs. We sought cover as soon as we reached the bottom of the ruins & looked around. We were expecting anything around us & so didn't take any chances! More to come next week! 

OSR Commentary - Greyhawk Grognard's Sword of Cthulhu rpg Kickstarter

 Three or four weeks ago I put money down on BRW Games, LLC's Swords of Cthulhu OSR rpg supplement kickstarter! And I can't wait to grab a physical copy of this Lovecraftian puppy! So why the blog entry after the Kickstarter?! Because I'm way behind on the blog entries folks. Joseph Bloch does amazing good rpg writing &  design work. So why put money Swords of Cthulhu? Because of something that jumped out at me; "Everything in Swords of Cthulhu goes back to the original stories by H.P. Lovecraft, plus select others that are in the public domain."

So I can't wait for Swords of Cthulhu to be in my gruppy hands.Can't wait to release the wraith of the Old Ones on my players! So how will this book be different then say Labyrinth Lords Realms of Crawling Chaos;'That's an excellent question. I happen to be a big fan of Dan and Mike's book, but went out of my way to avoid a pure redo of what they had written. However, it's inescapable that, because we're working off the same source material, there's going to be overlap.

Both books have half-Deep Ones (their "Sea Blood" and my "Deep One Hybrid") based off of the story The Shadow Over Innsmouth. They don't have any new character classes, however, and the number of new spells in their book is much smaller than in Swords of Cthulhu. There's some overlap in monsters, but they have some that I don't, and vice versa (I think because I cast a wider net in terms of sources). They also included psionics, which is absent in the Adventures Dark and Deep line as a whole (although I do have in the back of my mind an idea to "do psionics right" someday in its own dedicated book)." 

So now its a question of sit back, relax, and wait for Swords of Cthulhu rpg to show up in the mail! Swords of Cthulhu will be available through BRW Games, LLC's Drivethrurpg point here

Lovecraftian Horrors In Timelines & Alternative 2d6 Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg Campaign Action

 This is going to pick right up here from the last blog entry as this campaign comes together.  Could the Earth have ended as time travel basically makes a mockery of physics if it goes wrong!? The answer is a resounding yes! A time apcocalyse brings to mind Michael Brown's Afterday and Cepheus Atom . Trying to escape such a reality & timeline could be the focus for an Empire of Time game unto itself. 


For most of the day I've been gone to a local car repair shop & thinking about the implications of 'Deep Time' for an upcoming Empire of Time campaign. The Earth at the beginning of its formation is going to be a place of very valuable commodities geologically speak. Ancient Earth is also going to be an incredibly alien place vastly different from anything we're used to. 

Perhaps the barbarians are not the ones that we're used to?! We know that in Empire of Time there are several species of alien on Earth even up to the time of the first life forms on Earth. But were there other alien species  that the player's PC's could encounter say around 750 million years ago?
"...the basis of the fear was a horrible elder race of half-polypous, utterly alien entities which had come through space from immeasurably distant universes and had dominated the earth and three other solar planets about 600 million years ago." HP Lovecraft 'The Shadow Out of Time' 
The Flying Polyps are some the most dangerous & underrated alien horrors that most dungeon masters wouldn't think to use out of context. The players stumbling upon the Flying Polyps black bisalt cities would be in incredible danger. Shadow Fall from Baggage Books has a really solid set of Flying Polyps stats; "Flying Polyp 100kg Killer (Carnivore), Underground, Fly, A78672, #App: 1-3 Athletics-1. Ranged Weapons (Natural)-2, Recon-0, Survival-1. Gravity 1D6, Hide-6 and see below; Speed: 6m A polyp’s gravitic attack has two effects: it pins a target in place unless it makes a Difficult STR role (Instantaneous and Repeatable) and it creates a strong wind of energy-deficient (i.e., freezing) air that causes 1D6 cold damage. Those killed by a flying polyp will freeze to death. Attacking a polyp is difficult, as their non-material nature makes them essentially immune to physical violence: any such attack must kill it in one combat round, otherwise it heals completely by the start of the next round. Energy attacks such as bombs, flamethrowers, and actual energy projectors supplied by Elder Ones or Mi-Go cause damage in the usual manner: cumulative as more successful attacks are made."

Given the nature of Deep Time is it any wonder that the alien & semi material nature of the Flying Polyps makes them a real hazard where dealing with traveling the eras around 750 million years ago. There are schools of thought in the Lovecraft fandom that think the Flying Polyps may have extreminated a number of interstellar species. There are those believe the Polyps were in point of fact seeking to settle colonies on Mars, Neptune, & Venus. To put this in perspective those colonies if they are still there could be one of the greatest dangers that the player's PC's might run into exploring the 'Deep Time' around those worlds. 

Imagine a Deep Time  mission to Mars to stop mankind from stumbling upon a sealed up well of the Flying Polyps?! We know that the Great Race of Yith's consciousness  left the Earth's 750 million year old  timeline to jump far into distant future. But the Polyps were so dangerous that they left them behind and this is a perfectly dangerous opportunity for the PC's to come across them! Because of the Empire of Time's Deep Time rules on time travel paradox & complications there's opportunity to deal a harsh blow to these Lovecraft invasive alien species. But is there really anything the PC's could do?! 

Could the PC's stumble upon an Earth timeline where physics is breaking down because of the Flying Polyps colonizing Earth as they were always meant to. These horrors have been released from their slumber by the chronal particles of time travel drives themselves?! 

The Grass Isn't Always Greener - Sunday Morning Prayer Breakfast & Beat Down! Play Report! Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland Rpg & Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise

 Our get together on a Sunday morning finds our group of gamer's PC in the grip of alien sentient mutant plants! The gang of player's PC's are on Cha'alt & in the middle of one of the worst neighborhoods on the planet after a night of partying! The players are hired as bouncers to clean out any left over partiers! Except things are not as they seem for our crew of Eighties inspired cybernetic & energetic degenerates!  The bands have gone and the partiers are no where to be found!?! 

 


That's when the adventurers come face to face with 'The We'eedz'! 'The We'eedz are an invasive alien mutant plant species that loves to infect, eat, and prune humanity and other alien species throughout the galaxy. This heinous species arose after the events of Cha'alt: Fuchsia Malaise in the day glow radioactive blood  of the Great Old Ones! 

'The We'eedz' wanted to 'neogiate' with the PC's all of the while trying to flank them. Our Heather Britney Bang Bang 3rd level  wasn't having none of this BS & dropped a plasma grenade into the mix.Things went from bad to worse as the weedz then blasted the party with a psionic head bang for 2d6 points of damage. Foo Man the Wonder Wizard of  Waz  5th level Starspawn  wasn't amused and had put up a magic mind shield.  Things went from bad to worse as the weedz took out The Pink Collector Brutacorn 6th level Sarah's PC growing through out the PC's body. Ronald Rogun Cyberskin level 4 got off a lucky grenade toss and cleared the storm drains & the sewer with another plasma grenade. Tiger Tie Night Stalker 5th cut a path for the party through the wee'edz. 
'The Stack' cosmic barbarian & scholar of beat downs snorted a heavy duty bit of cosmic dust and praised lord Randy began to chant in the name of the cosmic gods! The rest of the party joined in! He was praying for a miracle and he got it! Lord Coke Cosmic Smiter of Justice 7th level brought the pain as lightning & thunder rained around the neighborhood frying the wee'eedz around the party. Lord Randy be praised! If the party wants to get off of Cha'alt they gotta keep working it! Because on Cha'alt this is where the pain starts! 

Wee'eedz 
Alignment: Chaotic

Movement: 60 foot

Armor Class:14 

Hit Dice: 4

Attacks:  Henious Thorns, Flying Razor Leaves, Aging Field, or Weapon
Damage: Henious Thorns 1d6, Flying Razor Leaves 2d6, Aging Field, or Weapon

Saves Grit, 13, Agility 11, Resolve 14, Death 14 

Special: 

Grow like the Wind - The Wee'eedz grow 2 foot per round as per their movement 
 Sentient - The Wee'eedz have fed on the blood of the Great Old Ones & have an evil disposition & intelligence geared  towards the destruction of humanity. 

Aging Touch The Wee'Eedz can activate a field once per day for five minutes. Anyone that comes in contact with the plant ages five years for every round and must save versus poison or be stunned for 2d4 rounds

Flying Razor Leaves
The Wee'eedz  has 2d6 leaves that can detach and fly up to a mile away. The plant hears and sees everything that the leaves do. If the leaves are slain, it takes one week to regrow each (e.g., if the plant has lost six leaves then it takes six weeks to regrow all of them.The leaves do 2d6 edged damage. 

To The Max 

1-19 The Wee'eedz grows at at incredible rate seeking  the orafices & soft tissues of its victim. Blood, liquids, guts of its victims body fuel the horror as it shreds anything it can get ahold of! It  to absorb its victim within itself. Does an extra 1d4 damage 

20 Feel The Wee'eedz - The evil mutant plant species deals an extra X6 as it attacks seem to land everywhere! 


So the wee'eedz atre not all that original & were inspired by Skirimisher Publishing's 

Mutant Plant Monsters book which has all of the plant weirdness for the Wee'eedz 

'Alone In The Darkness' - Campaign Commentary On Colonial Troopers rpg & Adventurer,Conqueror, King Rpg Hybrid Campaign Session Report

 Being a forever DM sometimes is a great thing & sometimes frankly, 'it sucks as a friend of mine' another forever DM says. But there are lots of highlights of greatness take for example last night's Colonial Troopers & Adventurer, Conqueror, King's hybrid campaign. Which picks up from this post on the blog here. 
And this get's into last night's game session. The player's ship drops out of hyperspace after receiving a distress call. Yes you've seen this movie before or so you think?! 

The party drops out of hyperspace into a no name planetary system & finds a Trade Empire class Commerical Transport floating dead in space. They've never seen this style of starship before and its massive. Yet greed get's the better of them & they begin making preperations to go on board. And yes this starship isn't from their universe. 

Aboard ship they begin to look around & find that Engineering is baracaded from the inside. Their pilot and navigator  begin to slowly start scanning the ship with their own instruments relaying what their finding. They find that the ship's systems are being controlled from engineering & that there is a lifeform at the pilot's station. 
The party splits up ( the players decided to do this not me as the DM) and one half goes to engineering while the other goes to the pilot's station. All of the while system after system has been shut off or shut down. When the party reaches the pilot station the door swings open in zero gee and they are confronted by a humanoid with a beatle for a face! A  Khepri warlord confronts the party and all Hell breaks loose as they attempt to open up on the insectal terror. But the fangible bullets are absorbed by an alien force shield the PC's have never seen before. They retreat as the Kephri disengages from combat shuts the pillot station door.  The other group finds itself outside of engineering & tries to communicate with whomever is inside. 

They finally make contact with the  Nephilim starship engineer within who after a bout with the universal translator tells them about the Kephri warlord taking over the ship. And turning the crew into fodder for its young. 
The Warlord then began to attach strange bioorganic systems throughout the starship and the cheif engineer had hid. Then the hyperspace generators began to take the starship elsewhere but the engineer managed to maroon them both in this dead starsystem. 
And that's where we ended last night! 

OSR Review - CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons From Kent David Kelly For Your Old School Campaigns.

" Have you been wanting to include some classic old school dragons in your campaign?  This book will save you hours of development time!  Many thousands of dice rolls have been made for you, with the results carefully collected into stat and treasure templates for easy reference and use.  Herein you will find 100 pre-generated dragons complete with unique names, combat statistics, spells (as appropriate), and pre-rolled treasure hoards. "



 "All 100 of these glorious beasties have been sorted according to their relative challenge level, from Crysthax the Pale (a very young white dragon, suitable for level 1 or 2 encounters) all the way up to Arcanthia the Invincible (an ancient gold dragon, who can easily provide a challenge to PCs of level 15 and up).All stats are clearly provided in Basic/Expert/Advanced format for easy conversion to other systems." 

There are two things you as a DM can never have enough of and that's  dungeons as well as  dragons. And let's talk about dragons shall we? Specifically CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons From Kent David Kelly! CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons rocks in at one hundred & fifteen pages of old school goodness. There's this huge D&D sale on drivethrurpg & a player of mine grabbed the Castle Oldskull mega bundle for me. CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons is on the pile of pdf books that I'm making an effort to review. So CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons is a tome of well dragons that covers NPC dragons across multiple editions including Basic/Expert/Advanced. What it does is flesh out these dragons not simply as 'monsters of the week'. But as living & breathing NPC's with thier own characteristics, special abilities, treasures, etc.. Instead of simply as a pile of stats on the page. The stat blocks are crisp, the writing solid, & the ideas are well done. There's more then enough to keep dipping back into the well again & again for a different dragon with different challenges to suit your environs & the campaign. 
These dragons could come in very handy in OSR games as you need them as important NPC's. 
Oldskull Dragons fits the bill in several ways. One it allows one to bring dragons into a campaign that most players have never heard of. Two dragons are a perfect for mid to high level OSR campaigns where kings, & royals face down NPC's. Yes, I'm talking about a game such as the Adventurer, Conqueror, King rpg here. Oldskull Dragons  is also excellent for Castles & Crusades but there may be some modifcation necessary to fit your C&C campaign. The truth is that CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons fits a niche and that is the fact that almost any Dungeons & Dragons campaign can use a dragon. The monsters are incredibly powerful, very well done, and absolutely underrated in my estimation of the grand game. There are a variety of reasons for this and they include the fact that dragons are too damn powerful, dragona have undeserved reputations, dragons can undermine a campaign, and dragons fit their alignment. Dragons are also very cunning & should be used sparringly.CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons From Kent David Kelly  goes a long way to fixing a multiplicity 0f problems with old dragons. The writing is top drawer, the exacution well done, & over all this is a good book to add too the Dm's tool box.

CASTLE OLDSKULL - Oldskull Dragons From Kent David Kelly For Your Old School Campaigns.  

Sword & Sorcery Timelines & Alternative 2d6 Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg Campaign Action

This is going to pick up right from this rpg blog post here. Time travel is a dangerous & expensive business, alternative Deep Time worlds with humanity or alternative humanity could be far more alien to our 2022 eyes. Reading through the Empire of Time rpg & the Barbaric rpg today there's some ideas that are rattling around my mind. Could the Barbaric rpg actually hold some real potential for truly alien human societies for your 2d6 time traveling campaigns. 

The thumb print of humanity is a very minor thing in Empires of Time, and sifting through Scandinavian Legendary Creatures for Barbaric! leads me to wonder if the player's PC's stumble upon the remains of ancient literal godforsaken ruins. And the fact that the 'monsters' might actually be ancient alien like creatures left behind by the gods of Scandinavian Legendary Creatures. Things left behind within the Deep Time of  the Empire rpg?! Things left far before the time when the oceans drank Atlantis, and the rise of the sons of Aryas?! 

The Sumerian culture of Warlords of Atlantis seems oddly familar and yet has the required undercurrent of Lovecraftian horror to it. But not the usual H.P. Lovecraft mythos  horror with a bit of tweating. Perhaps the player's PC find themselves at the end of one cycle of Ragnarok before the beginning of another phase of humanity. And this could explain the instance of Terminal spies among the societies of Warlords of Atlantis. 

Reading through Warlords of Atlantis brings up an idea with an alternative 43 AD rpg timeline. What if the Romans never actually left the whole of the U.K.?! And the very land started to turn against them?! The very land turns against the Romans & too a certain extent the Celtics as well who ally themselves with them. The 2d6 is far closer to Zenobia coupled with a d100. But the information within 43 AD rpg is invaluable. And a time travelling trading campaign in alternative timelines means that things can get very interesting very fast. 

The dangers of Deep Time also means looking into Dougal Dixon's The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution for alternative dinosaur species ideas. The book contains countless examples of alternative evolution for prehistoric dinosaurs abilities, enviromental concerns, & more. For a time travel game campaign that focus on alien weirdness Dougal Dixon's books & the prehistoric ideas within The New Dinosaurs: An Alternative Evolution helps to move things along. 

Porting into an alternative timeline can make the difference between simple survival & a successful campaign. 

OSR Review - The Centaur Race By James Mishler & Jodi Moran Mishler From James Mishler Games For Your Old School Campaigns

" This booklet contains all the information you need to create a centaur player character for Labyrinth Lord or Advanced Labyrinth Lord (and is easily adaptable to other OSR systems). Details include both a centaur race and a centaur racial class, as well as information on creating centaur bands and camps. 12 pages (6 pages of content)."



The Centaur Race By James Mishler & Jodi Moran Mishler is a racial PC class for Labyrinth Lord or Advanced Labyrinth Lord  has just about everything a DM is going to need to pull of a party of centaurs into their OSR games. Before we proceed let's look deeply into the Centaur race a bit; "Centaurs are a sylvan race of forest and meadow. They tend to be atavistic and live in primal harmony with nature, abiding with dryads, nymphs, satyrs, treants, and other woodland folk and creatures. They tend to eschew contact with non-sylvan, non-fairy races, preferring to live in woodland and meadows in the wilds. Generally, males are wandering warrior-hunters while females are gatherers and gardeners who tend to the young. Males are also known for being wild and violent, especially when confronted with anything from the outside world; they sometimes raid settlements, especially for wine, which they consume with much gusto and little tolerance, making them even more troublesome" Centaurs have all of the standard choices available from Cleric, Druid, Fighter, Magic user, & Ranger. The B/X Racial class for Centuars is solidly done & there's more then enough bones on here to flesh out these dangerous demi humans. The centaur in question lives two hundred years and is able to pick up a wide variety of skills from scholar to brawler the centaur is easily one of the most underrated demi human races in old school gaming. 
Why do I say dangerous?! Because in mythology there are two protraits of centaurs one is the wise scholar & teacher. The other are the lusty, violent bands of roving pillagers who tear across the Greek countryside. The Centaur Race By James Mishler & Jodi Moran Mishler does a good job of balancing these two portrayls of the mythological race. And there's the third pop culture style pull of the centaurs which is as the stoic guardians & members of the Fairy races in old school fantasy. All of these are encompassed by The Centaur Race By James Mishler & Jodi Moran Mishler  From James Mishler Games. Centaurs shouldn't be used lightly in old school campaigns they can be the source of adventure or as the foils for quests as well. Centaur settlements can if used correctly wreck & easily destroy an old school party of adventurers. The Centaur Race is a good solid addition to OSR games & for a dollar its a no brainer. 

The Centaur Race By James Mishler & Jodi Moran Mishler  From James Mishler Games Is Available Here