In Search of the Unknown / Keep on the Borderlands as the 1979 Campaign

I have been going over old notes for the past few months, re-reading some monsters I created back in the day, and wondering which ones might be good for the Basic Bestiary.  One, in particular, jumped back out at me, the Schreckengeist, which lead down a rabbit hole of notes I had collected on the adventure B1 In Search of the Unknown. 

This got me thinking about an entire campaign, or even mini-campaign, that includes B1 but also B2 Keep on the Borderlands.  These two adventures are designed to work with each other.  To do a campaign though I would need a slightly larger (but not much larger) sandbox/hex crawl.

A while back Eric Fabiaschi posted an idea on using Judges Guild 'Wilderlands of High Fantasy' & Gary Gygax's B2 'Keep on the Borderlands' As Old School Campaign.  There are links to a discussion on the Piazza and a map for "The Borderlands" for the Wilderlands of High Fantasy. Additionally, Zenopus Archives (home to all things Holmes) talked about the Warlocks & Warriors wilderness map as a hex crawl.

These have a lot of merits, to be honest, and that along with my ideas of a "1979 Campaign" have morphed into something "new" and interesting. 

Looking back over my post The Enduring Appeal of Holmes Basic & B1 I can't help but think there is something here worth exploring.  

The 1979 Campaign

The idea behind this is a campaign, likely only using Holmes Basic (so levels 1 to 3), the AD&D Monster Manual, and B1 In Search of the Unknown to create a hex crawl style adventure campaign.  At least that is the start. Over time the characters (strictly Holmes Basic ones) would move on and out to the Keep and the Caves of Chaos.

The idea is to be 100% old school, though I am free to grab newer materials that expand on these areas the core will be D&D circa '79.

I suppose I could be accused of trying to chase some sort of high or feeling from my youth. And that would...not be entirely wrong. But in truth, there is no way I can recapture the feeling of 1979 any easier than I can recapture the feeling of yesterday's lunch. What I can do is try to set up something that helps me recall how it all was.

This would obviously be some sort of limited-run experiment. Holmes tops out at 3rd level.  

My current debate with myself is whether or not to include module T1 The Village of Hommlet.

There are plenty of good reasons to add it.

1. It was released in 1979 (August 16–19, 1979 at Gen Con XII)
2. It is a great introductory module for first-level characters.
3. It was written by Gary so there is a certain veneer of authenticity about it.

The only reason I would not use it is because it is so deeply tied to the Temple of Elemental Evil notion. It is the starting point of the TAGDQ series for AD&D.  All the other adventures I am considering are pure Basic D&D.  While I am considering other adventures, they all tie into the B1/B2 areas of exploration.  T1 is a little different.

The Adventures

• B1 In Search of the Unknown
• B2 Keep on the Borderlands

Supplemental Adventure Material

• Expanding the Keep 
• Return to the Keep on the Borderlands (2e) (TSR/WotC)
• Keep on the Borderlands: The Expansion (Usherwood Publishing)
• Reclaiming the Caves on the Borderlands (Izegrim Creations)
• Pacesetter Adventures
• B1 Legacy of the Unknown (Pacesetter Games & Simulations)
• B2 Beyond the Caves of Chaos (Pacesetter Games & Simulations)
• B2.5 Blizzard on the Borderland (Pacesetter Games & Simulations)
• Putting the Keep into the Judges Guild Wilderlands
• Borderlands Mapset (Red Pub Games)
• Bat in the Attic Games for everything Wilderlands

I could take all of this and put into my three-ring binder format. Hell. There is even enough room for Holmes basic in this!

If, and that is a big IF, it goes well I would even consider moving on and up. Either via Blueholme rules or take the B/X - OSE route.  In truth though I would rather keep this one light and tight as it were. Levels 1 to 3 with the goal of exploring the local wilderness (hex crawl style) and clearing out the local caves.

I also can't help but think of my Traveller Envy and the three board games I have covered here also released in 1979; Wizard's Quest, Magic Realm, and Demons.  While my original goal was to mine these for ideas for my War of the Witch Queens, there is no reason why I can't also use them here.  

Wizard Quest has the players explore a wilderness area until they have collected enough treasure. In Demons the players are searching for treasure with the aid of various demons while avoiding local authorities. In Magic Realm...well I have not been able to play that one.  BUT I could incorporate the background as the past for this area. A bunch of wizards had a mighty battle here and the land is full of strange creatures and even stranger treasure.  All these wizards bringing in their bound creatures would also explain why the Caves are so full of them and so much magical treasure around. Maybe even Zelligar is the last of these great wizards.  It would also allow me to bring in weaker demons and devils from the monster manual. Though not too strong, these are only 1st to 3rd level characters.

It certainly would get me into the mood for all things 1979. Plus what is more 1979/early 80s for me than Traveller Envy? 

If I was really clever I'd collect the names of characters from people playing in 1979 and have them be some of the "named NPCs" for the background.

How about it? Were you playing in 1979? If so drop your character's name and class below!

Notes / References

• Classic Adventures Revisited: B1 In Search of the Unknown
• Mail Call: Return to the Unknown
• The Enduring Appeal of Holmes Basic & B1
• Marissia, Daughter of Zelligar, The "First Witch"
• Monstrous Monday: Schreckengeist
• Warlocks & Warriors (1977)
• Wizard's Quest
• Magic Realm
• Demons

100 Days of Halloween: Cupcake Witches

Continuing my exploration into the Witch RPGs on Itch.io I ran across this one and had to grab it.

As always I will be following my rules for these reviews.

Cupcake Witches

This is version 2.0 of the game. The price is 3.50€ for 10 pages. Converting that over to what I spent, about $4.00 US (back in February) that comes to about ¢40 a page.  The PDF is full color and there is a print-friendly version.

The design, writing and layout is by Steffie de Vaan. The cover was edited by friend of the Other Side, Elizabeth Chaipraditkul.

The introduction from the game:

"You’re a coven of witches running a cupcake bakery together. You’re fantastic at your job and swimming in orders, so it would be really great if the local demons could cut out their bullshit.

Yes, demons—the actual, literal kind from Hell wreaking havoc upon humanity."

Ok! Many of you know I love witches and my oldest kid is a pastry chef now. So honestly this gets all sorts of immediate buy-in for me.

Requirements for the game outside of the rules? 2d6 per player and all the cupcakes. Tea or coffee too. Again. This has my attention.

The game discusses the use of the X-Card mechanic. Fine. No problem with that.  What follows is a description of the world. We have all seen this one before "it's a world like our own but magic is real..." the default supernatural world then.  Character creation as after that. You describe your witch, what power(s) they have, motivations, and so on.  There is your role in the bakery and a neat little mechanic called Approach. This is Sugar, Spice, and Sprinkles. These are, try to get things done as nicely as possible, getting things done in a forceful manner, and saying "the hell with it" and using magic. Respectively.  Every witch has a 1 in each and then 3, 2, and 1 points to put into the three categories. So scores of 4, 3, and 2.  You decide how you want to approach each problem.

There is a nice little table of relationships. You roll d6x2 (not exactly a 2d6) and get two relationships.  You work with other players and characters here. So a roll of 1 indicates you have another character who is your bestie. This one is worked out with another player.  

There are demons, hunters and other witches that can come into your lives and bakery. You must deal with them.  

The idea is to be a fun little game (it is described as a micro-RPG) to spend an afternoon with. Personally, a rainy and cold afternoon in the fall would be perfect. Bake some cupcakes or muffins, put the kettle on, and have some fun.

There is even a nice random plot generator that honestly is flexible enough to use anywhere.

This game also shares mechanics with de Vaan's other game, Wights which also looks fun.

--

I would use this as background material for figuring out some major NPCs in my War of the Witch Queens.  I can see taking my members of the Tredecim and working out "Cupcake Stats" for them all.  

Larina would be: 

Sugar: 4 Spice: 2 Sprinkles: 3
Motivation: Witchcraft
Role: Barista
Personal Power: Read emotions

I'll have to work on the relationships. 

It is a fun little game and would be an amusing time with the right group while say making cookies or cupcakes.  I would say everyone has to decorate a cupcake to be a spell and then you get to eat it when you use it.

Monstrous Mondays: New & Old School Monster Books; Where the Basajaun lives

Basajaun

Today I want to talk about a few monster books coming up and their intersections and why that is all great.

I recently featured two new Kickstarters on my Kickstart Your Weekend post.  They are Twilight Fables and A Folklore Bestiary for 5E and OSE (less than 72 hours to go on this one!).  Both are for 5e with the Folklore Bestiary also for OSE.

Both of these books look fantastic and you should back them both.  

But you may ask, will there be overlap? Will I end up buying the same monster twice? And the answer to this is "Yes. Yes, you will."  This is not a bad thing.  Going through the two publicly available lists of the monsters both have the Bukavac and the Basajaun.  I'll even go a step further and point out that my own Basic Bestiary also has a Basajaun. 

That is three different versions of the same monster. I have seen the one from Twilight Fables and you have all seen mine.  They are very different from each other. While obviously the same creature, they do slightly different things. In truth, it is very much like how old bestiaries would describe animals. Even known animals would get slightly different treatments depending on the observer.  And these are not even the only ones. AAW Games has a monster card for the Basajaun for both 5e and Pathfinder. There very well could be a lot more.

The Basajaun here is a good example. This is a monster that exists in folklore and by all rights has a home somewhere in a fantasy game but has little coverage to date. That will change and he will get more exposure. If each monster book is like a medieval bestiary (and that is my starting point for the Basic Bestiary) then it makes sense there are differing views.  

To take it a step further, Twilight Fables uses the conceit of Rod Waibel's point of view character the sophisticated Gnoll Fleabag as the chronicler of these creatures. Likewise, I use my iconic witch Larina as viewed from notes from her Journal.  These two would obviously have different points of view on the same creature.

I have pretty much purchased every monster book I can for all versions of D&D and many for other games.  I always find more room on my shelves for more monster books.

Some monsters appear so often that I have no choice but to compare them. The Orc is a great example. Others also appear rather frequently. The Type I to VI demons from the original Monster Manual appear so often in demon books (thanks to the OGL) that I have been calling them "The Usual Suspects" as a nod to their frequency and to the 1995 film. 

For me, there is always room for more monsters and more monster books.

100 Days of Halloween: Build A Witch

If you are starting to think I went on to Itch.io and bought everything witch-related...well you would be mostly right.  I didn't buy everything...just a lot.  Today's item was from that.

Build a Witch

This product says exactly what I am planning to use it for; not as a game in and of itself, but as an aid for building witch characters for any RPG.  

As always I will be following my rules for these reviews.

The PDF is 21 pages, comes with a color (ish) and a printable version.  There is also a file on just the character section.  All for $3.00.  That's about 14 cents a page, but there is a bit of blank space due to layout. One title page, one table of contents page and one font attribution page leave 18 pages of content, 8 of which are pregenerated characters.  There is no art other than the cauldron pictured above.

The file is landscape, so shows up better on your screen, but if you want to use in on an iPad you'll need to turn of rotation.  

The pdf covers various questions that can be asked or random answers used (1d8, 1d12 and 1d30 are most common). 

You start out by choosing a name and gender for the witch.  Couple of things. I often like to choose their name last, once I get a feel for who they are.  Sometime the names jump out other times they don't.  This list is nice, but hardly long enough.

Gender is next.  I like the idea that Gender could be something like "The sound of waves crashing on the beach" yeah great! I can work with that. But I am unsure how to play that. Also, there are genders listed here and there genders mentioned in the sample characters. None of these lists match.  The sample characters are the pretty traditional "male", "female", and "non-binary."  Don't dangle "Wrath and revenge" and "The void" and not follow up with it.

There are some tables. Great. Everyone loves a random table. There are Traits (1-8) *Note: at no point does the author say "roll a 1d8" that is my interpretation of the rules.  Backgrounds (1-12), Quirks and Knacks (1-12), Special Items and Trinkets (1-12), and some question prompts (30 of these).

Ok. I like all of that.  Every bit. I would scribble all of these on a character sheet whether I am playing D&D or Buffy or Mage.  A few little nitpicks though.

Layout.  I understand the desire to use landscape, but the layout used does not favor it.  Also, tables are broken by pages, which often can't be helped, but start the next table on the next page, not in the middle of the page.  I had flashbacks of trying to print papers on a dot-matrix printer and seeing a sentence print right on the tear line. 

Reading over the sample characters though is a bit confusing. Not that they confuse me, but I am not sure what they were made with.  Not following? Ok. Let's take an example.

Let's look at Hemlock.  Hemlock (he/his) is a genderfluid witch with Satyr ancestry.  Ok I already mentioned gender, so let's move past that now. Ancestry? No tables for that.  Ok. No big deal I am sure that ancestry is and has to be 100% dependent on the game you are playing. A Satyr witch would work fine in D&D, not as well in say C.J. Carella's WitchCraft or the American Witch.  But, oddly enough would be right at home in Mage.  (Someone will get that.) Moving on.

Appearance. Ok, fine no need for a table for that. Expertise.  Ah. wait. When was this discussed? Lifestyle. Again, this is brand new.  Favorite Things. I like it but not detailed above.  What isn't there are all those tables mentioned above. What are his Traits? What about his Background? His Quirks & Knacks?

I get the feeling that the author loves to make witch characters and I get that. I really, really do.  I love their obvious enthusiasm here too. It's just the product doesn't feel finished to me. 

How about this. I try this out on one of my own witches.  I'll choose a D&D 5th edition one since that has the most familiarity with readers.  So Taryn my fey-pack warlock. Look, I have the name and gender already. Taryn, she/her.  Since this is an established character I won't roll, but choose.

Traits: Calculating.  Taryn never does anything she doesn't think out a 100 different ways.
Background: You made a bargain with a fae being... Sort of. It was her mother, Larina, and Taryn was raised by her, no joking, fairy godmother, her first 13 years of life.   
Quirks and Knacks: You will only make potions that need to be stirred clockwise. Actually, this IS a habit I have for her. Her mother has the same one and it was something they noticed about each other when getting reacquainted. Though the once about crows is also cool. 
Special Items and Trinkets:  A spell bag to comfort and ease anxiety. She keeps a small black velvet bag. Among other things is a ring from her mother and a tooth of a small dragon.

The Prompts are also fun but with 30 of them no need to go into them all. A couple though.

2. She loves her witch hat. She wears it all the time to "embrace the stereotype."
5. Yes she uses a broom and loves to go fast on it. If she were a modern witch she would own a motorcycle. 
7. Her favorite season is Fall of course.
9. Her familiar is a black cat named Mojo.
22. She always has her deck of Tarot cards on her.
28. Uses tea in her craft? No self-respecting witch EVER goes without tea. 

So yeah.  The prompts are fun and should really help you get in the mindset for your witch character.  

Will I use this product? Yes. I will. In fact, I might use it to help define the more important NPCs in my War of the Witch Queens campaign.

100 Days of Halloween: Covens

Another Itch.io product. This one I discovered via Twitter while out plant shopping with my wife.  That means I was pushing the cart while high on antihistamines while she shopped.  I was able to buy it, download and read it on my phone so that was nice.

Covens
by Gabriel "Gabo" Kerr

This game is described as "about a coven of witches trying to survive in present-day small-town America."

As always, I will be following my rules for these reviews.

The PDF is four pages, with 1 for the cover and 2 1⁄4 for text. The price is $2.50, so we are still at that $1 per page average.

You work together to create a coven of witches. The game says "Small town America," but honestly, it could be anywhere. There are three stats (Power, Resources, and Influence) with five levels for each. You get five points to distribute.  

From here your coven is given a problem and you and the other players figure out how to solve it. You all add whatever scores you think will aid the problem. Roll the dice and add them up. A TN of 3 is a super easy task and one of 15 is near impossible.

And that is pretty much it.  

I like the idea and might adapt it for internal coven conflicts and drama, that might be fun. Especially since I have a rule in my games that witches can't actually harm each other, but something like this could bring a lot of fun to the table. 

100 Days of Halloween: Lady of the Soil Warlock Patron

Kicking this off with a very summery sort of "Witch." And this one is a bit different than most of my fare here.  It is a Warlock Patron for 5e warlocks and it is on Itch.io, a platform I really don't use much.

The Lady of the Soil - a 5e Warlock Patron

This warlock Patron was written by Harlen Eherenman and based on the patron of Ginny Di's warlock character Aisling.  I like Ginny Di. She is super enthusiastic about all things D&D and she is a joy to watch.  Likewise, Aisling is also a very enjoyable character. I can see Aisling and Morelia the Wood Witch both making guest appearances in my War of the Witch Queens campaign as "celebrity NPCs." 

How is this product though?

Again it is on Itch.io and I typically see prices much higher than I see for similar content on DriveThruRPG.  If I am using a rule of thumb of 10 cents per page at DriveThru then I should likely expect 25 cents per page here.  Sill, I am going to follow my rules for these reviews. 

This is $3.50 for four pages.  One page is for the cover and the last page is a half-page, so here we are doing $1.00 per page.  The PDF is full color.

What is included here is some background on the Lady of the Soil. What spells she grants her warlocks and what powers they gain at various levels.  There are four new invocations, but no new spells.

The cover mentions that this uses the OGL, but there is no copy of the OGL included (as required) and while there is a notice of Product Identity, there is no explicit declaration of what is being claimed.  The assumption I guess is the whole document.

Ok, it is fun, but there isn't really enough here.  This really is for the Ginny Di fans out there. Without Aisling to make this interesting there is not enough here to justify the price tag.  

Sorry. I really, really wanted to like it a lot more. 

100 Days of Halloween: Day 0

Today is my wedding anniversary! I have been married 27 years now and it has been fantastic.

But that is not why I am posting today.  

Today is DAY 0 of my "100 Days of Halloween."  Tomorrow is Day 1 and I will start it promptly at Midnight.  Every day from now until Halloween I will review witch-related RPG material.

I am going to lean heavily into D&D and its variants; the OSR, Pathfinder, and closely related games, but I am also giving myself the freedom to venture outside of the D&D realm.

Many of these will be DriveThruRPG products, others will be on other platforms and some will even be print only.

Some days will have one product, other days may have multiple related products. 

Given I am going to be reviewing other people's work about or around witches I need to establish some rules for myself.

The Rules

I normally feel a little bad when reviewing someone else’s witch material.  Not to be too blunt, but there is just no way they have been writing about this as long as I have. So I can’t knock them down for missing something that is obvious to me, but maybe not to someone else.

Also, I have to remember that these publications run from the professional to the amateur. I can’t expect high levels of layout, art, or design in most of these.  Yes, there are some absolutely stunning pdfs there in terms of production values and art.  But most of these are not going to be at that level; most of the books there are not at that level period.

The price point also seems to be an issue.  My mental comparison on price here is going to be about ¢10 per page. 

I want to give each product a fair shot, given that I know that many of these could be the first effort of the author/designers.

Some products I’ll be reviewing here are quite small. Others are linked to other products.  Some others still are naturally paired with other products.  In any case, I have bought and downloaded enough to cover the entire month.

I am going to leave this page like this with the rules and what I am doing so I can link back to it with each review.

With each book/pdf/product I am going to be looking for the following:

• Is it playable/usable in my games?
• What new things does it offer?
• How “Witchy” is it?
• Are there any new powers, feats, or spells?

Also, I want to consider:

• Can I use this with my own Witch classes/material?
• Can I make it part of my War of the Witch Queens?

These last two are obviously personal choices for me and should not detract from the product if they are not met.  They can though add to the appeal for me. 

My goal is to find something to recommend for each product and not to unfairly compare it to others.

I might also make a distinction between a "witch" and a "Witch" or class that can act like a witch vs a class named Witch.  This is a distinction that might only matter to me, but hey, this is my blog.

So come with me on this journey of 100 days.  Yes, it is summer outside right now, but let's turn our thoughts to fall and chilly nights! Halloween will be here before you know it!