Payday Ordering Spree

Today was payday, and of course that is a great time to stock up on old-school gaming products, so that is just what I have done.  Let me share the highlights of my three-part consumerist orgy:

1.  Ordering two classic TSR modules from Amazon.com Marketplace vendors.  There are two AD&D modules from the olden days that I have been wanting to obtain print copies of, both for the sheer fun of it (I fetishize books) and also because I intend to get working on Labyrinth Lord conversions of them as soon as they arrive.  Like JB at B/X Blackrazor has done with his excellent B/X conversion of White Plume Mountain, I intend to make my Labyrinth Lord module conversions available as free pdfs to all you folks in the blogosphere once I complete them.  I don't wish to reveal exactly which modules I ordered just yet, because my players could be reading this and there is a good chance (I hope!) that at least one of these adventures may find its way into my current campaign.  (Remember, I am extremely lazy so usually don't convert or adapt stuff unless I plan to use it.)  Suffice to say that I found the two modules I wanted for less than $10 each, cover price.  The shipping bumped them up to about $13 and $15 respectively, but that still feels like an excellent deal for two much-beloved classic modules in "very good" to "like new" condition that I know I will use again and again.  Score!

2.  Ordering a hardcover Labyrinth Lord Revised Edition rulebook and a print copy of Stonehell megadungeon from Lulu.com --  at a discount!  There is -- for two more days, until the end of the weekend -- a 10% discount to be had when ordering certain stuff from Lulu.com, so I took advantage of that deal to order two essential OSR products.  The first is simply a hardcover version of a book I already have and use, the Labyrinth Lord  rulebook.  My players have been using my paperback copy at the gaming table a lot, and despite the fact that my friend Carl brings his paperback copy too, those greedy players seem to like to refer to them a fair amount as we play.  So my desire to have an exclusive DM's copy of the rulebook, combined with my tendency to fetishize books in general, led me to the conclusion that I should purchase a nice, hardbound copy of the rules set I will doubtless be using for years to come.  This hardbound Labyrinth Lord book was my most expensive and extravagant purchase of the day, but well-justified I think, now that I have a weekly LL campaign underway.  My second Lulu purchase was the much-anticipated (by me) and much-lauded (by James Maliszewski and others) Stonehell megadungeon.  I have seen the pdf preview version of Stonehell, which I liked, though I kind of need a print copy of a thing in my hands before I can really get familiar with it.  So the pdf and the positive reviews of Stonehell whetted my appetite, and that combined with my general appreciation for the work of Michael Curtis -- do yourself a favor and check out his superb Dungeon Alphabet, reviewed here -- made my purchase of Stonehell in print inevitable.  The fact that the multi-talented Carl also has published artwork in Stonehell only sweetens the deal (support your local artists!).  I don't know exactly how I will use Stonehell in my Arandish campaign yet, but I know I will find plenty of inspiration and good material to hork (or possibly use whole-cloth) within its covers.  Score!

3.  Going to my favorite local game store and buying $10 worth of dice.  I have been feeling a bit short of d12's and d8's lately -- I only own one of the former and two of the latter! -- though this hasn't mattered to me all that much in recent years since I have mainly been a player in the game sessions with my former 3.5 group and my current Mutant Future group.  But now that I am the referee of a full-blown Labyrinth Lord campaign, I feel the need to have more dice on hand to share with dice-less players etc.  Plus, it is far more fun when rolling for things like starting gold or flaming oil damage to actually have three (or more) eight-sided dice to roll at once.   So today I went to Evolution Games in south Eugene and picked a grand total of twenty dice out of their 50-cent basket.  There were a lot of pretty ones -- I somewhat fetishize dice -- so I walked out with a bunch of d20's and d6's I probably didn't need, but also with 4 or 5 more each of those much-needed d8's and d12's.  Score!

Delzar - A Land Divided

In Old Calendar years 3021-3089, thousands of war refugees emigrated south from the high northern plains of Telengard to settle in the area they called Delzar -- which is Old Noffellian for “central plains.”  

The kingdom of Delzar has flourished in the intervening generations into a region of abundance, though its social and economic stability is constantly threatened by escalating border disputes between Delzar and its southern neighbor, Mizar.  Delzar thus finds itself a land divided: divided between the peaceful, bohemian northeasterners and the harried warriors of the militaristic south.

Delzar is ruled by an oligarchal triumvirate or ruling council, made up of one hereditary landowner often called the "king" or "queen" (by southern Delzarians) or "lord high councilor" (by northerners); one Delzarian Army general appointed by the military; and an elected member called the "approved councilor."

The ruling triumvirate of Delzar meets in the capitol city of Bilnhof, a cultural and arts mecca found in the foothills at the eastern end of this lush grassland country.  Bilnhof is in fact a cultural and artistic center for all of Ara: even non-Delzarian artists, musicians, and sculptors flock to Bilnhof to soak in the natural beauty, the temperate weather, and inspiration of other creative types.  Northeastern Delzar is an culturally diverse region where dwarves, rodians, and even some civilized ogres (!) are found living amongst humans in positions of authority and respect.  Many northern Delzarians see the country and its bohemian capitol city as leaders in modeling a non-violent way of life to the rest of Ara, and are embarrassed, saddened, and/or outright enraged about the country's ongoing territorial disputes with Mizar.

Delzar's southern border disputes with the aggressive and honor-bound Mizarian people are an ever-present threat to Delzarian peace and prosperity.  Many southern Delzarians choose to enlist in the King’s Army, joining in the defense of the southern frontier against the unified clans of Mizar. Note that despite its name, the Delzarian Army ultimately takes it orders from the entire ruling triumvirate of Delzar.  Like their Telengardian forebears, southern Delzarians -- especially those in the Army -- tend to be stolid, bitter and strong-willed.

I have rarely taken adventure parties to Delzar; while I did begin one campaign in Bilnhof, the main action in that campaign quickly drew the party away from that city within the first session or two.  Interestingly, I think I am the only person ever to play a Delzarian PC, or at least a character from the Delzarian Army.  In one of Scott Peoples' campaigns, I played Edwin Pimmelfinnick, a Delzarian Army officer sent to investigate stuff with a group of non-military adventurers.  Edwin was a fun character and it was a great campaign, but despite his Delzarian origins we spent most of our time underground, so despite Edwin's intervention I still haven't spent much time in Delzar.

Arandish Campaign 2010 - Session 2

We had an excellent second session last night.  Another smallish group -- 4 players plus myself -- and that factor combined with the group's thirst for action kept things moving at a brisk pace.

Three of last session's PCs -- Innominus, Uncle Junkal, and Hazel -- were in attendance, plus one new addition, Barbarella Bootay, a female rodian duellist / gambler / mountebank.  Further, before game play started for the evening, at Hazel's player's request we shuffled Hazel's attributes around a bit (to favor STR and CON) and shifted her class from Bard to Fighter.

The group then picked up where they had previously left off, traveling to a glade about a half mile away from the suspected ravine lair of some sinister, raiding orcs called the Hidden Dagger warband.  Barbarella the rodian snuck close to the ravine and discovered two orc sentries sitting in the lowest branches of a tree, with crossbows in their laps.  She then returned to the party and proposed a plan whereby she would climb a neighboring tree, leap into the high branches of the orc tree, then tackle one of the sentries from above while the rest of the party picked off the second sentry with missile weapons.  A distraction would be caused by one of the hirelings whipping a goat -- the party had been able to literally con (via Barbarella's loaded gambler's dice) the villagers out of five goats -- so that the beast would run through the woods toward the base of the tree, bleating and causing a ruckus.

This plan worked beautifully, with Barbarella leaping from above and slipping a bag over orc #1's head, then dislodging him from the tree.  Meanwhile, Innominus made a particularly successful sling attack vs. orc #2, rolling his nightly d30 roll for the damage and rolling a 28 or 29.  So orc #2 was instantly killed, and in fact the damage was so great that I ruled the sling stone passed through the orc's body and broke the tree branch he sat on as well.  His corpse fell to the ground next to his bagged but still conscious companion.  Barbarella, who had rigged a harness for herself to prevent her falling out of the tree, dangled from a branch and slugged orc #1 on the head with a crowbar, knocking him unconscious.

The party then dragged poor orc #1 (named "Ug") to a nearby glade and tortured him for information.  Uncle Junkal stuck toothpicks under Ug's fingernails while Innominus, the only party member who speaks orcish, questioned the captive about the size of the Hidden Dagger, the names of its leaders, etc.  The group got a few useful tidbits out of Ug, including a rough map to the first few rooms of the warband's underground lair, but ultimately Ug was not high-ranking enough to know very much about the Hidden Dagger's hierarchy nor its plans.  Further, when asked if the orcs were in league with creatures of other species, Ug was evasive and would reveal nothing -- he insisted that they were just a group of orcs, but Innominus suspected otherwise.

Having completed their interrogation, the party killed and skinned Ug -- Hazel used her huntress' skills to skin him very carefully -- and then they prepared to enter the orcs' underground complex via a passage at the base of the large, hollow tree Ug and his fellow sentry had recently been sitting in.  The plan the party collectively came up with was: the party would enter the dungeon with Innominus in the lead, wearing Ug's skin as a clever disguise.  The other three party members and four of the Vedik hirelings would tie themselves together with rope to make it appear that "Ug" was bringing in a group of humanoid prisoners.  Then, at the right moment, they would attack.

Ug had revealed that the first level of the underground complex was in two sections, separated by a ravine crossed by a rope-and-plank bridge.  Thus, as an emergency precaution, the party instructed their remaining six hirelings left above on the surface to gather tinder and firewood and to be ready to throw it down into the ravine to set that bridge on fire should thirty (game-time) minutes elapse without the party returning. 

With Innominus leading the way with his orc-skin mask, the party and four of their hirelings descended into the orc lair.  The first room they came to was empty, but the second chamber contained four orcs, including one who questioned "Ug" about where he was taking the prisoners.  Innominus claimed he was taking them to Lieutenant Garchar -- a name the group had picked up from the real Ug when he was still alive -- but the orc guard told him that that was against procedure and that he should take the prisoners directly to "the pit."  He let them pass, and they filed through a narrow passage framed by a carved demon's mouth archway.  The orc guard sent two additional orcs as rear escorts for the prisoner group.  Note that I checked three different times to see if the orc guard would notice Innominus' orc-skin mask ruse, but the dice decreed that he was particularly unobservant -- it must have been near the end of his guard shift -- and he accepted the cleric at "face value" as Ug.

The next chamber was immediately adjacent to the ravine-crossing bridge; it contained two additional orcs whose main job was to watch the bridge with crossbows at the ready.  It was here that the party chose to start their attack.  Innominus and Barbarella surprise-attacked the bridge guards, while Uncle Junkal, Hazel, and the hirelings ganged up on the two rear guards.  Innominus missed with his first swing, and Barbarella inflicted a minor flesh wound on crossbow orc #2.  Uncle Junkal threw two knives, missing with one but shearing off one of the rear guard's nipples with the other.  Hazel killed the other rear guard with one stroke of her long sword -- a natural 20 critical hit -- and the best of the Vedik hirelings, a fellow called Porkins, dispatched Uncle Junkal's half-nippled orc with his hand axe that same round.

The surprise round over, initiative was rolled for the second round; the party won.  Uncle Junkal pulled out his crossbow (which had been hidden under his cloak during the "prisoner" ruse) and shot one of the crossbowmen though the throat, killing him before he could raise the alarm.  Innominus swung again with his warhammer and all but killed his orc; I think it was Barbarella who stepped in and administered the coup de grace.  In any case, the orcs were dead without making a single attack nor raising the alarm. 

I rolled to see if the two orcs remaining behind in the previous chamber heard anything, but they didn't.  So the party waited for a few minutes, then Innominus-as-"Ug" stepped back through the demon mouth and started telling jokes about an unpopular orc named Ugluk ("Ugluk sucks" had been written in orc feces on the wall of the first chamber the group passed through), which got the remaining guards laughing.  Uncle Junkal and Barbarella shot crossbows back through the demon's mouth at the guards, while Innominus attacked one of them with his warhammer.  None of these attacks were sufficient to drop either guard, but we rolled initiative again, the party won (again!), and next thing I know, Hazel jumps into the room, swings her sword, and rolls her nightly d30 roll for the damage, scoring enough damage (18 I think) to simultaneously behead both remaining orcs!  Voila!  The party had achieved their goal of clearing out the complex on one side of the ravine.

They concluded the session by searching the three rooms they had passed through, finding about 200 gp worth of coinage and a few mundane weapons.  Overall, another action-packed evening with lots of inventiveness and clever ruses from the players.  I shall have to post soon about how I am dealing with xp distribution -- that is still something of a work in progress -- but for now suffice to say that the characters are performing creatively and well, and I am having great fun with this adventure campaign.

Rules update: Rodians have infravision to 30'.

Carter's Cartopia - Looking Ahead

I am not one to make New Year's Resolutions nor do I feel inclined to look back on the previous RPG'ing year in any comprehensive, reflective, or list-generating way.  Yet I do find myself in a looking-ahead mode as the New Year of 2010 rolls toward its fourth week, and especially now that my Labyrinth Lord campaign has actually begun, I feel I can share a few words about where I think this blog may be heading.

For one, I will continue to post about the Arandish Campaign sessions.  Now that the game is underway, those campaign updates may indeed become the main focus of the blog insofar as the Lands of Ara are concerned.  There are, of course, a few more region blurbs (Blint, Gannar, Delzar) to get written, and eventually I will probably tackle those danged elementalists, but there may not be a huge outpouring of new Lands of Ara stuff except as it emerges / gets invented during the course of the Arandish Campaign.

Indeed, one of the main things I have realized about myself as I "look ahead" into 2010 is that as far as RPG'ing is concerned, I am first and foremost interested in playing the game.  All the generation of content I do, all the Lands of Ara world-building, all the blogging, is simply to make my life easier during game play.  While I hope others find this blog edifying and its content useful, the main thing is that I am using the shit out of it as my Arandish Campaign 2010 unfolds.

Which is a fancy way of admitting that I am both selfish and somewhat lazy.  Sure, I am sharing this stuff with you and I truly enjoy posting to this blog, but I do regard it as a cybernetic servant of my campaign.

Okay, okay, that's not the whole story.  I must say it is truly a pleasure reading other peoples' blogs and participating in the OSR blogging community in general.  It may be true that I would not have started blogging if I didn't think it would serve my needs at the gaming table, but I feel quite lucky to have entered this particular virtual community at the time I have.  It is such a great time to be an old-school gamer and an OSR blogger: the products on the market are top-notch, the creators and artists share their work and creative processes over the blogosphere, and all of us have a great forum in which to share our experiences and insights as we play our individual campaigns and design our individual stuff.  A vibrant and inspirational community indeed, and I am thankful for its existence and support.

Beyond documenting the exploits of my Arandish Campaign adventurers and staying in touch with my fellow virtual Grognards, what else might be in the works for Carter's Cartopia?  Well. . .

You may be aware that Brave Halfling's Swords and Wizardry White Box has already sold out its first two print runs.  I am one of the fortunate few who got in on the first round of pre-orders and should be getting that wonderful product in the mail in the not-too-distant future (pleeeze??!).  Once I get that S&W White Box in my hot little hands, I (tentatively) plan to concoct a whole new campaign setting around it.  I do not yet have a name for the setting, but it will be LOOSELY based upon -- or maybe I should just say it will be inspired by -- the world of Barsoom from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars books, which I am currently re-reading for the first time since eighth grade.  I love these books and I think I want to take PCs into a world that is at least somewhat reminiscent of it.  This Barsoom-ish S&W campaign setting I am imagining will be much more stripped-down (class-wise) and less Tolkien-esque than the Lands of Ara, obviously more of a science-fantasy setting that includes firearms, airships, vast dry sea beds, abandoned ancient cities, somewhat limited magic options. . . . I don't know the full scope or flavor of it yet, but this is what's been brewing in my mind as I loaf around here watching "T.J. Hooker" on recent evenings.  It may also be that -- I may be so lucky if -- the publication of James Raggi's LotFP: Weird Fantasy Role-Playing will be well-timed vis-a-vis my plans to conduct a campaign in a science-fantasy-inspired setting.  (Late in 2010 maybe?  Pleeeze????!!)

In any case, I will be sure to post developments on this and other RPG'ing fronts to this blog throughout 2010 and into the future.  Thanks for tuning in!

The Labyrinth Lord Society Rules the Multiverse!

As a Labyrinth Lord devotee, I have been intending to join the Labyrinth Lord Society for some time now.  However, like Michael Curtis and (I assume) many others, the recent offer of an Advanced Edition Companion preview motivated me to finally send that email and get on board.  So I proudly declare my fealty to the LABYRINTH LORD SOCIETY:

Not only is this fine quasi-secret organization offering irresistible perks -- as you may know, I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of that AEC since about late October -- but it also serves as a model for how to effectively organize aspects of our grassroots OSR into something that can help promote the hobby to newcomers.  I have been most intrigued by the LLS's demo program, and may -- if time allows -- agree to host demo sessions of LL in the future, should the Society call upon me to do so.  There are a couple of decent gaming shops in my town (see comments here and here) where such a demo could probably take place. . .

Dwarven Steel Update

Going through my notes recently, I found that I left some critical data out of my previous post about dwarven steel items, to wit:

Dwarven steel is immune to the metal-corroding acids of oozes, jellies, and slimes, and is impervious to rust monsters.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it!

Arandish Campaign 2010 - Session 1

My concerns about having too many players in attendance last night (given that my optimal party size is 4-6) proved groundless, for the party who met in the Erratic Crow pub in Swampsedge at the start of our session  consisted of just four PC's:  Uncle Junkal the Juggler, a rodian bard, Percival the Scribe, a human historian and magic-user, Hazel, a human bard, and Innominus, a human cleric. 

The party consists of two bards, a PC class I had not even considered allowing until these two players started describing their character concepts to me over the past weekend.  I am no great fan of bards in general -- like James M., I find them a bit nebulous and unfocused -- but it became clear that the bard would be the best class to use for these two players who wanted to play jack-of-all-trades type characters, so I swiftly ordered and downloaded Brave Halfling's Delving Deeper: Bard and used that class as the basis for Uncle Junkal the Juggler and Hazel the negotiator / charmer / mountebank.  Obviously, I tend to be far more interested in letting my players play the characters they imagine than maintaining any kind of fidelity to my stodgy preferences, so now we have two bards -- albeit very differently inflected ones -- in the party. 

After meeting each other and consulting a couple of Swampsedge locals to confirm some orc raid rumors, the party swiftly moved out of Swampsedge toward the north, heading for an orc-ravaged village called Vedik that they had heard about in the local Swampsedge rumor mill.  Vedik is a day and half march north from Swampsedge, and during the first watch of the first night camping out in a copse near the northbound road, the group was attacked by a band of seven troglodytes.  [This was a case where I had to stick to my promise to myself to honor the die rolls, for part of me hesitated about sending in seven trogs.  I might have been tempted to reduce that number by two given that this was a party of four PC's with no front-line fighters, but I rolled seven trogs and I stuck to that.  My new mantra: The dice are fate.]  

A dastardly troglodyte

The attacking trogs would have achieved total surprise had Hazel (who stood first watch) not noticed their foul stench a split second before they attacked.  She alerted her sleeping companions, who sprung into action; we rolled for initiative and the party won.  Percival unleashed a magic missile, then elected to roll his once-nightly d30 roll for the damage.  This proved a master-stroke: he rolled a 28 for damage (!), and I therefore ruled that the missile passed through the first trog and roasted two more of its vile companions who were running up behind it!  With three trogs instantly fried, now the odds were evened out a bit: four remaining trogs versus four PCs.  

Hazel got off a bow shot or two, then, once one of the trogs was upon her, she did an evasive maneuver and lured the trog closer to Innominus the cleric, who was a better melee fighter.  Innominus killed at least one of the trogs with his war hammer, though he did roll a critical fumble in there at one point, dropped the hammer, and had to switch to his morningstar.  Both Uncle Junkal and the trog he fought were unlucky die rollers, and went at least two rounds without hitting each other -- the poleaxe-wielding juggler would make a last-minute comeback though.  After his stunning magic missile triple-kill, Percival pulled out his bow and started shooting his companions' opponents in the back.  Combat raged on.  In time, Uncle Junkal dropped his trog with a mighty polearm strike, and Innominus and Hazel (who drew her dagger for melee combat) finished off the other remaining attackers.  Now the party was safe to sleep the rest of the night -- the two bards took watch shifts so the m-u and cleric could get full rest and recover their spells via memorization and prayer in the morning --  and to proceed onward to Vedik the next day. 

While the party's peasant informant in Swampsedge (who had fled Vedik some weeks before) implied that the village council of Vedik might offer a reward for vanquishing the orcs, once the party arrived in Vedik it became clear that the locals did not have anything in the way of resources or wealth to offer.  The party negotiated with the Vedik locals for a future payment based upon the villagers' next years' crop yield and a promise of future assistance if the party should need laborers or henchmen.  We left off the session with the party preparing to head for the nearby orc caves with some local Vedik farmers / fighters coming along as hirelings.  There was also some talk about goats -- Innominus seemed keen to bring some goats along and herd them into the orc caves ahead of the party -- but I am not sure whether or not that issue got definitively resolved by the time we quit for the night.  

My thoughts on the party: A very promising group!  They were able to keep their wits about them and survive the trog attack despite none of them being fighters.  Also, I am excited by the ideas I hear this group bandying about as they strategize: at one point, one of the players (Hazel's I think) brought up the idea of negotiating with the raiding orcs to get them to stop attacking Vedik and its environs.  Of course, orcs are not known for their willingness to parley with humans and their allies, so this suggestion may not be actualized, but the mere fact that such an idea got raised bodes very well for this party and its ability to "think outside the box" and not necessarily rush into every situation with weapons swinging.  Then again, Innominus seems to have a strong penchant for killing, so he may resist party efforts to negotiate with foes, and there's also Uncle Junkal, who wanted to "trade" the party's orc-dispatching services for complete dictatorial control of the village of Vedik upon their return!  So who knows where these whacko PCs will take things next?  I only know I am looking forward to it immensely.  

My thoughts on the rules: So far, so good.  I think Labyrinth Lord is excellent and accessible, though I am still getting used to the layout of the book, and personally I wish the "Encounters and Combat" and "Labyrinth Lord Lore" sections were closer together in the book since those were the main sections I referred to during the session.  There were also a couple of additional house rules I decided to invoke at the last minute -- i.e., maximum HP for all characters at 1st Level, and yes to DEX-based initiative modifiers -- but overall Labyrinth Lord seems to be working great.  Even our total first-time rpger had no obvious difficulties in grasping the basic mechanics of character creation and combat, and this speaks volumes about the potential for old-school rpgs to lure in new players.  And for the first time in my DMing career I used morale checks!  I did two separate monster morale checks during the trog battle, once after Percival blasted three of them away with a single magic missile, and once after they were down to two trogs standing.  The trogs succeeded at the checks both times and fought to the bitter end.  I think I like the morale rules, and it makes even more sense to use them now that we have bards in the party who may want to influence the party's or their enemies' morale in future situations.