Monday, December 24, 2012

The Forbidden Palace of the Golden Emperor








Saturday, December 22, 2012

What Noppin is Like

Precis: Hammer Horror Japan. 



Tuesday, December 18, 2012

What Cathay is Like




What the Desert Lands are Like




Sunday, December 16, 2012









Saturday, December 15, 2012

Uz Session 3 Highlight Reel

Another Uz game happened...
  • No slaves were taken this time.

How Many Notes Do You Need?





A.2 Shrine of Manugal of the Setting Sun

Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

Monster: None
Treasure: Nil

Monster: None
Treasure: Nil



Thursday, December 13, 2012

Christmas in the Dark Country

Like this but with more snow



Father Winter observed by beings from the Future/Past





Tuesday, December 11, 2012

A Grand Tour of the First City of Men: Part One







Sunday, December 9, 2012

Uz Acropolis Session 2 Highlight Real


So I ran Uz again on Friday...

Thursday, December 6, 2012



No. Appearing: 1d6 (1d6x10)
Armor Class: 14
Hit Dice: 6
Movement: 120'
Attacks: 2 Gore (1d8)
Morale: 9
Alignment: Chaotic





Sunday, December 2, 2012

Uz Returns! Session Highlights

Map courtesy of Mike D


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Cocanha: The Story So Far

A more accurate Cocanha map.




A map of their keep






The siege of the Keep of Ervesa by Peter Robbins



Boamundus (deceased) as rendered by Jeremy Duncan




The idol






It is currently the middle of the summer of 1193.


Sunday, October 28, 2012

Cocanha Playtest Campaign


This map is a rough draft.


PCs are likely to be members of the same knightly household.

Local Names
Medieval Nicknames












Saints of Cocanha
St. Cecilia
St. Foy
St. Martha
St. Sergius Paulus
St. Sebastian


The Barony of Ezorre
Castel d’Ezorre

Banneret Manors

The Barony of Calanha

Castel de Calanha

Banneret Manors


The Bishopric of Cocanha


Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Sgt. Udo's Howling Kommandos

Recently the party in my weekly Nightwick game has become the head of a small mercenary company.  They've named it after their official leader, played by Jeremy Duncan.  The first group of six bandits was encountered in a refugee camp outside of Lychgate.*  They were originally in the employ of a strong boss known as Big Jean, which the party slew.

Toothless Tom Smiler (deceased) was a younger man with a tangled black hair.  He had all of his teeth and often smiles big, broad smiles.  When asked why he was called "toothless," he produced a small pouch filled with teeth and gets another big grin on his face.  He met is end during an attempted mutiny.

Fingers is a medium built man with a large mole, a scraggly beard, and a scar over his left eye.  He is missing the index and middle fingers on his right hand, and you notice that he often attempts to favor it until he remembers that he's missing his fingers.  He personally strangled Tom Smiler to death during the mutiny.

Dunderheaded Mutch is an enormous man with a greasy mop of curly, red hair.  His face is blunt and imbecilic.  He often moans to himself, and though he seems capable of conversation, Tom Smiler noted 
that Big Jean always kept him under supervision.

Dwardie the Fool is a short man with a pot belly whose nose has clearly been broken several times.  He occasionally sings strange, nonsensical songs and dances around like an idiot; however, during times when silence is of the essence you note that he grows quiet and still as a mouse.

Brother Odo claims to have at one time been a priest, but he is also the bandit who believed that the Sun is the God of Law and that demons come from the moon.  He is a rough-looking man with salt and pepper hair and pug nose.

Wamba Big-Member is a boastful Karslishman that makes his fellow bandits uncomfortable.

From left to right: Fingers, Dwardie the Fool, and Brother Odo. 
Art by Jeremy Duncan

It turns out these men were members of a group of bandits living in a ruined manor house south of Hommlet. While passing through the ruins of Hommlet** - and desperately trying to avoid pig-men - they found a number of other bandits in the company of a devil-man.  After slaying their diabolic leader, they added the following miscreants to their band:

Mumbling Marion is unintelligible to everyone in the party except for the other Kommandos.  He is a dirty man with a square head and few teeth.  He enjoys hitting things, which he does with a noiseless intensity.

Nalla the Lad lacks a tongue, so it is difficult to know much about his life story.  He is a thin man who carries a banjo, but you have not seen him play it.

Little Jean looks very similar to Big Jean, but is much smaller.  The other bandits assert they were both from some overly inbred village in Averoigne.  He did not seem saddened by the news of Big Jean's death.

Red Bill is a portly man with a mean snarl.  He can be a bit hot headed, but Fingers assures you he has no love for his former masters and will likely be a loyal - if ornery - companion.

Handsome Jack is missing his noise, and has a prominent brand on his face marking him as a heretic.  When asked about his heresy, he says only that he "stood up to a noble."  It is unlikely that he was handsome before his punishment.

Darbus and Dunbar are twins, and they would be identical if their faces were not both hideously scarred in completely different ways.  Darbus has a scar running across his left eye and his chin has a cleft from an old sword wound.  Dunbar's nose seems to have been broken several times, and his ears are both swollen and cauliflowered.  Or perhaps it is the other way around...

*The Dark Country has seen some really rough times lately, with the White Lady's awful pig-men destroying most of the farmland around Lychgate, a peasant revolt in the south, and a looming invasion by Arnawald, the Black Eagle of Waldheim.

**Hommlet, which lay near Lychgate, was destroyed a few weeks ago by pig-men.

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

In Fair Narbona Where We Lay Our Scene

As Chris mentioned over at the Hill Cantons, he, Mike D., and I have started working on a medieval RPG - with quite a bit of help from the nice folks over on G+.  As he mentions in that post, I'm going to be running a playtest game set in the Languedoc.  Below is the map I made for the region between Toulouse and Montpelier.

Click to Embiggen

I'm currently working on a map that will blow up the 24 mile hex containing Narbonne to serve as the main focus of the playtest mini-campaign.  PCs will be starting in the city of Narbonne (Narbona in Occitan) in the year in 1191.  I plan on doing a full write up like Chris did for his Ulfland game, but for right now here are the hooks I'll be using for my first playtest session:

The Archbishop of Narbonne, Ramon Berengar, is upset by the news that his cousin, who held a manor between Narbonne and Perpignan, has died.  Word on the street is that his cousin was struck down by the Almighty Himself - or at least one of His saints - but Raimon is convinced that he was murdered by heretics.  He seeks honest men to investigate the matter.

A man claiming to be the bastard son of Raimond I Trencavel has seized east of Carcassonne and has begun raiding merchants traveling between that city and the coast.  He has captured the daughter of Roger Trencavel, the current ruler of Carcassonne, and holding her ransome for what he believes to be his inheritance.  Ermengarde, the ruler of Narbonne and faithful friend to Roger, has offered a manor and a large purse for any who can return the maiden.

Baldwin, the lord of Ferrals, has sent an emissary to recruit armed men in Narbonne.  Apparently there has been some trouble with the serfs at his manor.

So far, the players seem to be leaning towards rescuing the princess - an old cliche that I've never actually used before now.


Now for a general update - I recently moved back to Hattiesburg, and I've started running the Dark Country again on G+.  I'm using WFRP 1e, so my sidebar is still correct.  I'm really liking the way WFRP makes me think about certain aspects of the setting, such as careers, and I may do some posts about that in the future.

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Two New Uz Monsters

I've missed Monster Monday for two weeks in a row, so to make up for that, here are two monsters that make Uz a horrible place to live:

Corpse Worms
No. Appearing: 1d6
Armor Class: 14
Hit Dice: 1
Movement: 90’
Attacks: 1 (proboscis)
Morale: 8
Alignment: Neutral

Corpse worms are awful scavengers found in the various caves, ruins, and undercities of the Future-Past.  They appear as worms roughly six feet in length and three inches in width.  The face of a corpse worm is a hard, blunted point ringed with fleshy holes.  Their skin is slimy and incredibly tough, and it is possible that they are a synthetic creation of the Reptoids.

Corpse worms attack by thrusting their face into their opponent’s belly, eyes, or other soft regions like a sickening harpoon.  After a successful hit, a corpse worm deals automatic damage every round thereafter until the worm has slain its victim.  Thereafter, it will stay in the victim’s body digesting its internal organs.  They will only leave the body when finished - which takes several days - or if disturbed in some way.

Grabbing a corpse worm with one’s hands is ill advised.  They secrete a strong acid from their skin that will do one die of damage to anyone with bare hands.  If some sort of gauntlet or armor is worn, it will dissolve in 1d6 rounds, dealing 1 point of damage to the wearer once the process is completed.

Glassy Things
No. Appearing: 1d4
Armor Class: 16
Hit Dice: 4
Movement: 90’
Attacks: 1 (claw, bite or mucous)
Morale: 9
Alignment: Neutral
Glassy things haunt the upper levels of the Uz undercity.  It is believed to be a martian predator, and it is possible that these creatures swarm the martian tunnels deep below the city of Uz.  They are large, six-legged creatures whose body is made of a warbly, transparent substance.  The glassy thing’s body is almost in the shape of an onion, while its legs are long and tapered.  Its head is little more than a blunt snout ending in a open maw ringed with glistening, transparent teeth.  Its eyes, while small, are adept at seeing in the dark and pick up a spectrum utterly alien to man.

On either side of the glassy thing’s body are sacks filled with a horrible mucous.  It can propel jets of this mucous up to 120’.  This mucous contains a toxin that forces those hit by it to make a saving throw or be paralyzed for 2d6 turns.  This is the way by which glassy things hunt their prey.

Monday, September 3, 2012

Making Europe into Europa

I've been trying to write this post ever since I first came up with a Fistful of Denars.  You see, I have a problem.  I often desire to run a historical campaign, but I worry over issues of accuracy so much that I never get one off the ground.  This is partially a function of the very thing that makes me want to run the setting in the first place: history is what I have my degree in and, God willing, what I will soon have an advanced degree in.  This gives me a crippling desire to get things right, because I'm "supposed to know that stuff."

So I need something to make me think of the setting in a different way - something like Jeff's Wessex.  He distanced his setting from real world England by using a fictitious map with the names changed.  I kept trying to figure out how to do the same, but the only headway I ever made was by changing the Auvergne to Averoigne, but that comes with certain tonal implications and also the added baggage of trying to represent one of CAS's settings faithfully.

I hit a brick wall, but last night I remembered this:

click to embiggen

That is a map of what would have been the Known World to the Greeks and Romans. Note that Asia is at the top and Jerusalem is roughly in the center as in a Mappa Mundi.  This map contains the parts of the world I'm likely to run a campaign in (Western Europe and the Mediterranean) but is still fantastic enough that I can distance myself from worries about accuracy.

Here is a list of historical games I could see myself running at some point:

Rome c. 150 - 100 BCE
PCs are ex-soldiers or otherwise homeless people who seek to make their fortune in the Eternal City.

Rome c. 400 CE
PCs are a comitatus of Germanic raiders, Roman mercenaries, or whatever else they want to be trampling the Roman Empire under their sandaled feet.

Britain c. 450
PCs are the leaders in a Briton community facing an invasion by some slightly inhuman Anglo-Saxons, weird forest gods, and other British groups.

Ireland c. 850
PCs as Viking settlers in Ireland.  I actually ran this one session or two in college, but the group ended up not being able to meet due to schedule stuff.

Southern France c. 1050
This is a Cthulhu Dark Ages idea I've been kicking around.  PCs work for the bishop of a cathedral town investigating reports of miracles, monsters, and banditry.

Byzantium c. 1050
PCs as mercenaries - Latin, Viking, or otherwise - in Constantinople or a fictitious Byzantine city.  Become emperor or get blinded trying!

Southern France c. 1221
See the above link to the Fistful of Denars Post.

England c. 1215
Can you say "Robin Hood?"  This one is a bit more half-formed than some of the others, but it'd be pretty awesome to run a game about medieval outlaws.

The Holy Roman Empire c. 1390
Robbers, cut-throats, and adventurers in post-plague Germany.  Think Darklands but with maybe a tinsy-winsy bit more fantasy elements.

Looking at that list, I see that I'll need to clean up Northern Europe a bit to make room for Scandinavia so that those vikings can come from somewhere.  The general rule will be that if you're in Western or Northern Europe or the Mediterranean it'd look more or less the same but with monsters and magicians.  The further afield you go, the more it gets like something John Mandeville would write about.

I'd set up each of these campaigns in the following way:

1) History before the start date of the campaign went more or less as it did in the real world - excluding those areas that are cut off on the map.

2) The PCs' actions will constitute the basis of a new, alternate history.

3) Later campaigns set after the events of one that's already been played will make references to events in that campaign.  So if you make your guy Roman Emperor, he'll show up on a list of emperors you find in the HRE game and you'll probably find coins with his face on him.

4) All of them will have way more monsters and dungeons on them than historical Europe did (i.e. they will have some).  This one probably goes without saying, but my wife was quite worried there would be no dungeons when I pitched this to her.  She loves dungeons.

One final note: I'm not getting rid of the Dark Country or anything.  This was more of mental exercise to see how I would run a setting where Romans were Romans and Vikings were Vikings without being filled with crippling doubt.