Gog and Magog for Advanced Era Games

Don't you love it when you are doing a bit of research on a couple of different things and suddenly you read one thing and all these disparate threads come together as a nice whole?  Jung used to call it Synchronicity.  I say that if you bury your head in something for long enough your research numbed brain will see connections everywhere.  In either case this is some thing that clicked for me the other day.

I was doing research on the the original Balor/Type VI demons in 1st Ed AD&D and how there are only six of them.  The DMG lists them as Balor (their leader and the largest), Errtu, Ndulu, Ter-Soth, Alzoll, and Wendonai.  Wendonai.  Doesn't exactly fill you with fear does it.  Since I am using the OGC Balor as the basis of my own Baalor in my games I wanted to expand them a bit.  So these names are purely off limits (save for Balor).

That tied in with all the myths I have been reading (well, since forever) of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales (er Walesland?).  There was a Balor there too.  Only he was a giant with one eye on his forehead and another on the back of his head. I was reading about all these giants when I came across Gogmagog.

I had been familiar with Gog and Magog and Gogmagog because of an off-hand reference on Doctor Who years and years before.  I had scribbled down that Gog and Magog were akin to Ogres, but divine.  I choose ogres because of something the Doctor said "Gog, Magog and Ogre",  pronounced 'O-gree'.  In the book of Revelations Gog and Magog were the ultimate enemies of God's people.  Though to be fair Gog and Magog hopscotch all over the Bible and one is never really sure if they are individuals, peoples, or lands.  Gog and Magog also appear in the Qur'an as a monster (the monster of Gog and Magog) or again as a land.

Recently I reread the Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.  The chief of the Balrogs was a being known as Gothmog.  I knew I was on to something.  Obviously Tolkien, a professor of English literature and languages (especially Old English) knew of Gogmagog. In some early versions of Tolkien's work Gothmog is even described as a "son of Melkor and the ogress Fuithluin",  Later a "Gothmog" was also the orc in charge of Mordor's army in the Return of the King.  Obviously named after the Balrog (and less confusing than Glorfindel of Rivendell vs. Glorfindel of Gondolin).

All of this though has given me some ideas.

Here they are using OSRIC and  LL Advanced  Edition Companion.  All text below is considered Open for use under the OGL.

Section 15: OSRIC Chapter V copyright 2007-08 by Stuart Marshall, Chris Hopkins, James Boney, Robert Ross, Jeremy Goehring, Mike Davison, Daniel Proctor, B. Scot Hoover, Chris Cain, Bill Silvey, Floyd Canaday, Vincent Frugé and Matthew James Stanham.
Advanced Edition Companion, Copyright 2009-2010, Daniel Proctor. Author Daniel Proctor.
Adventures Dark and Deep^TM Bestiary, Copyright 2011-2013 BRW Games, LLC.
Gog and Magog for Advanced Era Games, Copyright 2015 Timothy S. Brannan.

Gog and Magog
Class F Standard Order (true) Demons
Frequency:  Very Rare (Unique Demons)
No. Encountered:  2
Size: Large, 13' (Gog), 13' 5" (Magog)
Move: 60 ft; 150 ft flying (AA:III)
Armor Class:  -3 (Gog) / -4 (Magog)
Hit Dice*: 10d8+10 (Gog), 10d8+21 (Magog)
Attacks: 1 bite or by special attack
Damage: 1d12+4
Special Attacks: Flaming great sword (2d8) (Gog) or Flaming great axe (2d8) (Magog) + 3d6 fire
Special Defenses: +2 or better magic weapon to hit
Magic Resistance: 75%
Lair Probability: 0%
Intelligence: High
Alignment: Chaotic evil
Level/XP: 9/3,750 + 13/hp**

Gog and Magog are two unique demons of the same sort of Balor.  While they are larger and more aggressive than their kin, their natures preclude them from ruling large numbers of lower demons as their brethren might.   Gog and Magog are described as "brothers" and this has never been proven by any occult scholar.  They share a physical similarity to each other.  Gog is large, predominantly red in color with black hair and beard. He wields a large flaming sword in battle.  Magog is larger, predominantly black in color with red hair and beard.  He wields a large flaming great axe.  Either causes an extra 3d6 points of fire damage per hit.
Gog and Magog can also use the following powers at will: detect invisibility, detect magic, dispel magic, fear (as the wand), pyrotechnics, read languages, read magic, suggestion, telekinesis (600 lbs.), and symbol (despair, fear, sleep, and stunning).   A +2 or better magical weapon to hit.
Unlike other demons, Gog and Magog cannot gate in lesser true demons.  Instead they may summon 2d6 demonic Ogres each.  These creatures appear as normal ogres save that their skin is red and they are immune to fire, poison, sleep and charm spells.  They also need a +1 or better magical weapon to hit.  Demonic ogres always have the maximum hitpoints for ogres.
Much like other demons, these two will bicker and fight and even plot against each other.  However when confronted with a common foe the will work together to defeat them.  They are completely loyal only to each other. They are often found in each other's company.
They are most often found on the Material Plane, the summoning ritual for one will also summon the other and only rarely in the Abyss.
They are violent, aggressive and constantly angry.  Neither is much for planning, but when pressed they are good strategists and have been used as generals by stronger Demon Lords and Princes.  They have even been known to serve the Baalseraph Ahriman, also known as Angra Mainyu.  A common tactic among the Demon Lords that engage their services are to choose a location and let the brothers go.

*Many "Advanced Era Games" use a d8 for monster HD. I prefer to use a d10 myself.
** Adjust according to your preferred system.

This Old Dragon: Issue #125

Been a bit since I did one of these I thought this might be a good time to pull this one out. 

Dragon #125 comes to us from a magical time in ancient history known as the Fall of 1987.  This issue is from September 1987 in particular.  I just met this girl from the dorm next door. She had already kicked everyone's ass in cards in her dorm and now she was over at mine to humiliate everyone here.  So yeah we quickly became friends, then best friends and sis years later we were dating and today is our 26th wedding anniversary.   So yeah, I look back at this time rather fondly. 

Dragon #125's special feature is Chivalry.  Not a bad choice with all the Arthurian movies I have been watching this month.  The cover art by Roger Raupp is a great portrayal of Arthur vs Modred. 

Letters include one to remind us the Wormy has appeared in 100 issues at this point. Sadly the end is near.   Also mentioned is Finieous Fingers which hadn't appeared in Dragon for a long time. There is also a letter about religion in D&D and the DragonRaid game gets mentioned. 

Nice ad for the Science Fiction Book Club.  This would have been around the time I joined for the second time and I see a number of books here I still have.  This was my transition phase of moving out of dark fantasy and into horror proper. 

Forum has the usual collection of deep cuts for the game.  One, in particular, discusses a letter from #121 about parthenogenesis in Amazons and delves into the details of the mating habits of harpies.  Is this Dragon Forum or Penthouse Forum?  Likely to have the same level of "Dear Editors, I could not believe this, but this really happened..."

The first true article comes up and it is a neat one.  Nigel D. Findley gives us The Ecology of the Greenhag.  The central idea revolves around the notion that all hag types are born of the mating of a Night Hag and various humanoid species.  It is a neat idea really.  I like that the Night Hag has a gestation period of 13 months. Greenhags likewise can give birth to an Annis after their "quite frequent" matings with ogres or hill giants. No indication on how the Sea Hags or other hags fit into this.

Ed Greenwood is up with a Realms article.  This was the start of the Golden Age of the Forgotten Realms.  The article, Woodlands of the Realms, covers magical and mundane trees and forests of the Forgotten Realms.  You have to give the guy credit, he came up with some good stuff even in the minutia such as this.  

Our special section of Chivalry begins next.

The Code of Chivalry by Mark Easterday gives us some knightly orders and what to do with them. There are benefits and drawbacks for PC Knights and even a simple system for honor.  It is nothing Earth-shattering, but it has appeal in it's simplicity. It is also something more people should be doing with knights, cavaliers, and paladins. 

Nice big ad for the Time-LIFE Mysteries of the Unkown series, now frustratingly incomplete at your local used book store. 

Thomas M. Kane is next with Meanwhile Back at the Fief...  This one covers all the duties of a feudal lord. There are some details on day-to-day activities and tables of odd occurrences.  I seem to recall some similar rules in the D&D Companion set. These came after that so I wonder how they compare.  

Armies from the Ground Up by James A. Yates is next and deals with the hows and whys of raising an army in an AD&D game specifically.   Again, very useful to have. 

A "new" section that was going to be semi-regular is up, Lords & Legends.  I have no idea how much or for how long it continued. A quick Google search shows it came up at least one more time.  This is entering as bit of a "Dark" time for me and Dragon.  I was in college and any spare money went to food, school supplies, or...other school supplies.  It is "dark" in the sense that it is a period that is unknown to me.  I remember reading this issue back then, but my Dragon purchases would be only for special occasions like the October issues. 

For this Lords & Legends from Katharine Kerr we have three lords of the Age of Chivalry; Count William of Orange, Bertrand (nephew of William), and Count Rainouart of Tortelose.  All from the Chanson de Roland ("Song of Roland").

Our last article in this series is Glory, Danger, and Wounds by Garry Hamlin.  This article also draws on The Song of Roland for inspiration and deals with battle and honor for Cavaliers. Large battles and private duels are discussed.  More importantly how such battles and duels should and should not be used. 

The Best for the Best covers elite espionage agencies for Top Secret and is a rare non-Merle M. Rasmussen article. This one is from William Van Horn and it is more proper for the Top Secret S.I. game that Rasmussen did not develop. 

For our centerpiece, we get a new "mini" game from David "Zeb" Cook, Clay-O-Rama, a miniatures battle game where the playing pieces are made from clay or Play-doh. You get some friends, some dice, some pencils, and some modeling clay (Play-Doh is recommended) and you get started making your Claydonian to do battle. Make sure you leave some clay/playdoh aside for missiles  The rules are really simple, you move, you attack, you calculate damage. The whole thing takes up three page and a cover.  Pull it out of your magazine and you are good to go.  It does look like silly fun, to be honest. 

Our fiction selection is by Lois Tilton titled The Passing of Kings.

Lee Ian Wurn is up with a rare post-Gary Greyhawk article. In the Bazaar of the Bizarre, we have the Magical Maps of Greyhawk.  We get magical maps that more or less are the magical GPSs of their day.  The article though gave me an idea.  What if there was a giant magical Bazaar, like what you find on Deva in the Myth Adventures books by Robert Lynn Asprin.  I could make each article a stall, like you find in those giant flea markets or the vendor's room at Gen Con.  And just to be that guy, the stalls have the same number of the magazine they appeared in.  This shop of magical maps is found in stall #125.

Jeff Grubb is up with Plane Speaking. This time featuring the Positive Quasi Elementals. There are only three, Radiance (Fire-Positive), Steam (Water-Positive), and Mineral (Earth-Positive). The Lightning (Air-Positive) appeared in the Monster Manual II.

The Game Wizards talks about the new Dragonlance Adventures hardcover.  This was a rather popular book with my small group in college. There were a lot of ideas I freely stole from it for my own games.  I also thought it was odd about the hard cap of 20 levels.  Now that is normal. 

A Second Look at Zebulon's Guide comes to us from Kim Eastland and covers all sorts of errata and clarifications.  I was out of Star Frontiers at this point having switched over to FASA Doctor Who and Star Trek. I have heard that Zebulon's Guide changed things but I will admit I do now know to what degree. 

Big ad for Mayfair's updated City-State of the Invincible Overlord

Role-Playing Reviews is next covering three fantasy adventures.  This is another one of the articles that would get WotC into trouble despite their good intentions.  The article is Copyrighted 1987 by Ken Rolston, which means he likely still held the reprint rights. The adventures in question are The Grey Knight for Pendragon, Phantom of the Northern Marches for MERP, and Treasure Hunt for AD&D.  We learn something we had suspected at this time, that the term "Module" was growing out of fashion. So for the adventures Rolston lets us know that the Grey Knight is one of the best he has seen, Treasure Hunt is a fantastic adventure for 0-level AD&D characters, and Phantom is wonderful.

The Role of Books covers some of the new releases for the last quarter of 1987.  There is the Orson Scott Card's Seventh Son, a couple from Harry Turtledove, and the debut (more or less) of Peter David who later go on to be one of America's most prolific authors.  

Jeff Grub's Marvel-Phile is up with some enemies for the Incredible Hulk; Abomination and Zzzax, and an ally, Doc Samson.  I was thinking about Abomination just the other day while trying to decide if I should include the Hulk movies in my Marvel re-watch that I might never get around to.

Gamer's Guide has the classified ads. I wonder how many of these places were still around. 

Convention Calendar covers the cons of Fall 1987.

Three pages of Snarf Quest, a page of DragonsMirth, and three of Wormy.

Some interesting bits to be sure, but nothing that jumps out to me to be used today.  The Greenhag stuff is fun, but I have taken my hags into a completely different direction really.  While everyone talks with glowing nostalgia for the Dragons prior to these (and I do as well) there is a lot between 1987 and 1997 that I never read and only have briefly glanced at.  So that might be my new sweet spot for The Old Dragon.

Is 2nd Ed the next wave of OSR?

I posted a couple days back on the growing 2nd Ed AD&D love I have been seeing on the net and in the blogs. Not a lot of it mind you, more like a few vocal people in a crowd still going on about how the LBBs are the "best thang evar!"  (Ok for the record NO one has ever actually said that, that way.)

But the OSR movement has slowed down to stead pace now and we are not getting Yet Another OD&D Clone this month and I think people are giving 2nd Ed another look.

I have mentioned in that past that 2nd Ed is the game I ran the most but hardly ever played.  I was very much a DM only with that game.  In fact I was one of the early adopters of the game, buying it on the day it came out and not even taking any of my 1st Ed books with me back to college.  But sometime in the late 90's that (and I) changed.  When 2nd Ed came out I was a single college kid, living in the dorms and surviving on the the money I made tutoring others in math and physics. When 3rd Ed came out I was married, living in a house with a brand new baby and just laid off my teaching job because the grant funding at the university dried up.   I was two completely different people.    In the middle I nearly gave up on D&D all together and even sold off 80% of my collection in favor of games like "WitchCraft RPG" and "Vampire" and other horror games.  All that I have left now for 2nd ed is the three cores, the Celts guide and some Ravenloft stuff.  Though the PHB and DMG are my originals and I got them the day they were rel

Why is any of that important?  It's important because it has permanently colored how I view AD&D 2nd Ed. for years.  I did remember the joy of the getting the latest Monstrous Compendium supplement, I only recalled the dreck of the Skills and Powers books.

But as time goes on and I wax on about earlier systems it is only natural that eventually my rose colored glasses gaze on 2nd Ed. Others seem to be doing the same.

2nd Ed as a retro-clone though has some issues it must deal with first.
- First, 2nd Ed is mechanically not all that different from 1st Ed.  One could in theory play a "2nd Ed Game" with nothing more than OSRIC.  One of the big selling points behind 2nd Ed was it re-organized the material from earlier editions.  It is in a sense the first Retro-clone.
- What made 2nd Ed special to many were the campaign worlds, and those don't fall under the OGL at all.  Plus most of the OSR folks seem to prefer sandbox worlds so anything created by them would naturally fit into any other world.
- The Proficiency system of 2nd Ed is needlessly complicated.  Note I am not saying it is complicated itself, it's not, but it is more complicated than it needs to be for a game.  3rd Ed's Skill system is superior in nearly every respect, and 4th Ed's is better still.  Reverse engineering it would not be difficult (premise, not every skill is worth the same amount) but I'd have to ask why?

The monster's in 2nd Ed were a nice improvement over 1st ed. I like the one monster per page format, something that 3rd ed dropped but 4th ed picked back up.

Personally I think it is only a matter of time before someone does a full on 2nd Ed clone.  I know there are some in development now.   I know of and have looked at the beta of Adventures Dark and Deep, a sort of "what-if game", as in what if Gygax had developed AD&D 2nd ED the way he had planned.

Review: Amazing Adventures

Amazing Adventures RPG

http://www.trolllord.com/store/product_info.php?cPath=22&products_id=211
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/106153/Amazing-Adventures%21?affiliate_id=10748

I am woefully behind on reviews.  So I want to do one I picked up at Gen Con and it has been sitting on my desk, taunting me to review it.

First off some disclaimers.
* I do know the author Jason Vey and we have worked on projects together before.  This is not one of those projects.
* I did read a playtest version of this game some time ago.  This review is on the published version of the book.
* I did not get a free copy of this. I pledged in Troll Lords pre-order program and picked it up at Gen Con.

Ok.  All of that is out of the way.

Amazing Adventures (hereafter AA) is a new Pulp Action RPG based on the same SIEGE Engine that runs Castles & Crusades.  Unlike other SIEGE games, this one is 100% compatible with C&C.  So much so that I plan on using them together, but I'll get to that.  Right now let's talk about what the book has.

Upfront we get our OGL declaration including a lot of Open content.  This will make it easy to make "Pulp d20" supplements or use this for other sorts of games.

We move right into an introduction to what Pulp Roleplaying is.  I know Jason, I know he knows Pulp quite well.  Reading this then is like reading Steven Kenson on Supers Roleplaying; I know he gets it at a level above me.  In this case yes, but Jason still brings it down to the peasants like myself to understand.  For me I am constantly defining Pulp by old movies or, more to the point, what it isn't.  It isn't Victorian, it isn't 50's Atomic Sci-Fi (yet) or Ultra Modern.
There is a brief introduction on the use of magic.  Something I'll get to again in a bit.

Book One deals with Characters. Note, there are not multiple books, but divided withing the physical book.
If you have played, oh, ANYTHING in the last 40 years then you know what this is.  The same 6 attributes of all d20 games and C&C.  They are described with a little more information given to languages.

There are Classes. This is based on Castles & Crusades afterall.  The Arcanist (who reminds of the Harry Dresden covers), are our magic users.  What I like about them is that they choose how their magic works.  So a "wizard" may memorize spells and choose Intelligence as their Spell-casting Attribute. Or Wisdom if it is deep understanding or Charisma if it is force of character.  I like this. A lot.  The Arcanist is a bit tougher than your d20 wizard with d6 HD.  More emphasis is given to cantrips/0-level spells and less on really high level ones.  Makes sense really.
The Gadgeteer is used to make all sorts of high tech gadgets.  Your Howard Hughes-like characters.  You hard-boiled detectives are well represented by the Gumshoe.  The Hooligan is your all purpose neer-do-well, from street urchins to thieves and generally all purpose bad guys.  But that doesn't mean your character is bad, no he/she could have a heart of gold and be down on their luck. ;)  The Mentalist is a great addition given the fascination that the time had with Mentalism/Spiritualism. If the Arcanist is a "magical" character then the Mentalist is the "pyschic" one.  I also want to point out here that the Mentalist is a PERFECT class to port over to C&C if you want to do psychic/psionic powers there.  The Pugilist is your bare knucks fighter. We have these chaps in the Victorian era games too, but these have some nice features.  There is the Raider for your big game hunters or Indiana Jones types. Finally the Socialite.
There are some good rules on multiclassing as well, which is great for this Socialite/Hooligan I want to make.

The same Alignment system is in play as C&C.  Personally I would have liked something different. The nice thing is that it is completely optional.  I think for anything other than a D&D/C&C game I would drop it.

Next up are Fate Points.  These work like Drama or Hero Points.  The characters gain them at a level increase, but chances are they will spend them faster.  I have ported this over to C&C and other d20 games and they work great.  There is a lot you can do with these above and beyond normal "points" and they really add to the Pulpy feel of the game in my mind.  The main character doesn't die in Chapter 1 or Reel 1, and he doesn't die at Level 1 either.  Fate points are the "To Be Continued!" of the game.

The book on Characters ends with some equipment from the Pulp age including when they were introduced (good) and pricing for the times.

Book 2 is Advanced Character Customization
AA is not just about leveling up characters, there are other ways to advnace and customize your Pulp Hero.
Characters can have Abilities (like Ace), Backgrounds (like Scientist), Skills, and Traits.  Traits are bit like Feats and a bit like Qualities and Drawbacks in other games.

Since there is Arcana and this Pulp there is a chance the characters will run into something that will break their little minds.  So we have a section on Sanity.  These rules are simple and solid really.  There is not too much detail to read like the latest DSM but enough for a game.

There is also a section on Wealth which is dealt with not as money, but rating based on class.

Book 3 deals with the Paranormal
In particular this chapter details the differences between psionics and magic.  Again, this would be great to port over to C&C.   The basic mechanics behind using psionics and magic are also detailed.  Frankly I am really, really glad that Psionics are different from Magic.  They should be and they should feel different. One of my disapointments with D&D3x (and 4e) was Psionics were treated just like another form of magic and they shouldn't be.

Spellcasting is based on Mana points which is a good change really, and fits with the Pulp period more in my mind.   Spells are largely treated the same way as other d20 products so adding new spells is actually pretty easy.

What is interesting about both the magic spells and psionic powers is they both have associated Ability scores.  So a spell might require Intelligence or Charisma.

Book 4: Rules of the Game is next.
It is what you would expect it to be.  Maybe a little more information on non-lethal and unarmed and two-fisted fighting.  There are some more gadgets here, in particular modes of transportation.

Book 5 covers the Bestiary
In pulp literature there were still unknown lands to discover and many of those lands had never been seen by man before so who knows what sorts of beasts would dwell there?  Well not really dinosaurs or giant apes, but in your game you can.  We get a nice mix of classical monsters, atomic-horror giants, undead creatures and aliens.  It's crazy. But crazy in a good way.  Since the monsters are standard format you can even pull out any monster book for C&C (or d20) and use those monsters too.

Book 6 Running a Pulp Game is next.
Details the pulp 4-act adventure (for contrast I typically run 3-act adventures for Buffy and 5-act ones for Ghosts of Albion).  For your benefit a sample adventure is included.

We end the book with a Character Sheet.

There are plenty of support files from the author:

This is the errata for the first printing (dark cover): http://www.grey-elf.com/candc/aaerrata.pdf

A Character sheet: http://www.grey-elf.com/candc/aacharactersheet.pdf
And expanded Firearms.  These are in addition to what is found in the books: http://www.grey-elf.com/candc/aafirearms.pdf

Ok. Judgement time.

Science Fiction Double Feature
I like this book a lot.  I am not sure I would ever play in a pulp setting, but I think it is a great update/replacement for Modern d20.  Truthfully while reading this what I REALLY want to do with this is something along the lines of 50's and 60's monster movies.  So aliens attacking the earth, giant insects and kaiju.  "This Island Earth", "Forbidden Planet", "Them", "Day of the Triffids" and the like.  I know this is not what the book was designed to do.  But it sure works great for it to be honest.  Actually better than great.

I have a lot of Pulpish, 2-fisted  adventure, games.  This one is great for Pulp, but to ignore the flexibility in this game would be a crime.  Plus the 50s are an under-represented time in RPG games.

Stand and Deliver!
Another thing that this game is PERFECT for is as a supplement to Castles & Crusades.  Not only do you get an updated Arcane class, you get a perfectly workable Psionic class with powers.   Even if you don't use that try using the Fate Point system with C&C.

One of the nice features of this game is the use of just using a +5 for Primes.  Instead of a TN or 12 or 18 like C&C, AA gives you a plus to your roll.  We housed ruled this for C&C a while back and I understand it is fairly common.  I like it better than the core C&C rules and will use this instead.

There is something else that this game would be perfect for.  I have had this desire to do a game based in 16th to 17th Century England where I could cover such topics as Queen Elizabeth, The Stuart Kings and Queens, Shakespeare, Sir Francis Drake, Guy Fawkes, John Dee, Highway Men, sail and conquest.  This plus C&C minus many of the D&D trappings would be perfect.

I am thinking of modding the vehicle combat rules for Highwaymen on horse back and coaches-in-four.  Stand and deliver indeed!

Missing
What is missing from the book that I think would have been nice are some Archetypes/1st level NPCs.
Also a supporting cast might also be good.  What level and class is Police Officer O'Hara at Precinct 9 where you get all your good tips?

A couple of adventures from the publisher would also be nice.  You could put a few of them into one book.

Also missing, but something that I can easily find, is a map of the World circa 1930 with so travel times and costs. I would have liked some more information on the world too.  I guess that is the one thing that this book lacks.  Granted, these things are typically covered in a Game Masters' book or a Campaign book.   I ignored it up to this point because I was so drawn in by all the things I want to do with this that I never considered missing.  I am hesitant to count off for it since a.) I only noticed it now despite having had and played around with this game for a while and b.) I was not then and am not now likely to even use it.

So where do end this?
Well I really like this book.  Even if I never play it as intended there is just too much good stuff in it to ignore.

Buy this if...
...you like Jason's other books.  This is his style through and through.
...you like two-fisted pulp action adventure.
...you like Castles & Crusades and are looking to turn it up a notch or add Psionics or a Fate Point system.
...you want a flexible modern system built on a system that is tried and tested for years.
...you want easy to use vehicle combat rules.

My imagination is really grabbed by this system.  I think there is a lot of potential here and a lot I want to do with this game.

This Old Dragon: Issue #103

1985 was an interesting year for D&D.  It saw the publication of Unearthed Arcana and Oriental Adventures.  "Deities and Demigods" had been renamed to "Legends and Lore".  60 Minutes did their hatchet job on D&D.  We were deep in what many have called the "Hickman Revolution" and indeed the third Dragonlance novel, last of the first trilogy was published.   1985 gave us a little peek at what 2nd Edition AD&D would have been like and it would see the departure of Gary from TSR.  A lot of this can be seen in November 1985 and in issue #103 of This Old Dragon!

While there is a loose theme here, the real theme of this issue is a glimpse into the future.
But first, let's start with the cover.  My copy is missing the cover so I had to pop in the old CD-ROM to see it.  It's a cool blue dragon that reminds me of earlier covers. I don't remember it at all really.

The Letters section covers the old "Photocopying service" Dragon used to offer.  Anyone take advantage of that?
Also starting next year (1986) Dragon will be $3.50 an issue.

Gary is up in one of the biggest "What If" scenarios we have all talked about.  That is "What if Gary Gygax had designed AD&D 2nd Edition?"  We will never really know, but there are some tantalizing bits in this month's From the Sorceror's Scroll. The Future of the Game talks about how now that UA and Oriental Adventures are now out the game should evolve to a 2nd Edition.  He planned out the publication order to include the new Monster Manual, Player's Handbook, DM's Guide and a new Legends and Lore (a name he very much opposed).  It should be noted that here Gary also says that a 3rd and 4th editions (or more) are not only inevitable but also desirable as the AD&D game is "vital. It grows and it changes". He said there is no likelihood that the AD&D rules will ever be set in stone.    BTW, if you want to get an idea of what AD&D 2nd Edition as-written-by Gary Gygax *could* have looked like check out +Joseph Bloch's Adventures Dark & Deep. He spent a lot of time researching and this article was the genesis of that.

Kim Mohan is up with updates for Unearthed Arcana.
We had a rule in our games, that if it was in the books it was law, even if the rule was obviously "off".  We did it this way to avoid rule-lawyering arguments over intent.  Plus the book was an impartial party. It didn't change based on the situation at hand. So I can't recall if we used any of this errata or not.

There are many reasons why people don't play gnomes.  I think this is one of the biggest ones.  All About Krynn's Gnomes from Roger Moore details the "Tinker" gnomes of Krynn.  Of course, this is also why my brother, who is now an engineer, only played gnomes.   I have to admit I REALLY disliked the Tinker Gnome idea and I hated the execution of the idea. An entire race prone to failure and explosions? You know what we call that right? Extinct.  Honestly, it was not till 3e that I could even look at gnomes again and really not till 4e that they became something I'd consider having a character for.

Like Dogs? Stephen Inniss seems to with a collection of 12 domestic breeds in A Dozen Domestic Dogs.  My favorite bits are on the armor for fighting dogs.

The Role of Books covers a few books I am not at all familiar with. Though there is one, "Dragonlance, Dragons of Spring Dawning" that everyone knows. One, "The Song of Mavin Manyshaped" by Sheri S. Tepper sounds interesting.

An ad for Palladium's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness is next.  Long before there was a cartoon there was this game. Talk about striking when the iron is hot!

Stephen Inniss is back.  He had submitted an article on centaurs at the same time another author, Kelly Adams has submitted an article on centaurs.  The resulting article, The Centaur Papers, is a combination of these two works.   They fit together nicely (deft editing) and produce a long article, but what must be considered to be the Master's Thesis on Centaurs in D&D.  At 11 pages it is no small article.   Every so often I run into someone that is really, really into some concept in the game.  I remember back in the 90s stumbling upon a website dedicated to the Bariaur race, others for different things. This article reminds me of that.  Just detail on detail.  If you are into centaurs at all then this is your "must read" article.

Our centerfold is a collection of errata and corrections for Unearthed Arcana.

TSR Previews lets us know that Oriental Adventures and Saga of Old City are on the way.  This is followed by TSR Profiles of Gary Gygax himself.

The Wages of Stress is the fiction bit for this issue. It takes place in the fantastic future world of 2007 when everyone is connected by computer.   Ok, not to be too glib about it there is a bit about how everyone's health can be monitored remotely.

The Ares section is next.

A Traveller article on the planet Tarus is up first.  Of Nobbles and Men by Paul Vernon.  He had some great White Dwarf articles around this time as well.

The Saurians is the article I used the most from this issue.  A race (with subraces) for Star Frontiers I mixed them in with the Sea Devils and the Silurians from Doctor Who to make a race of "Saurials" that I used in many sci-fi games and then later used again in D&D.   Plus it was easy to add in bits of UFOlogy to this with their Reptoids.

Roger E. Moore has a review of the Gen Con 18 designer's forum on Supers RPG in A Super-Powered Seminar.   A brief history of supers games is discussed here and what the future mught hold.

The Marvel-Phile covers three heroes I know nothing about; Armadillo, Count Nefaria and Hyperion.

Ads...Convention Calendar...Wormy and Snarf Quest.
Dragonmirth gets in a dig at 60 Minutes.

Issue #103 was not a bad issue, just not a memorable one for me. Some memorable articles and a tantalizing article on AD&D 2nd Ed.  

Curious about what White Dwarf was doing at the same time? Check out my White Dwarf Wednesday for issue #71.

This Old Dragon: Issue #65

Dragon Magazine #65 from September 1982 might, in fact, be the very first Dragon I had ever laid eyes on.  It is, without a doubt in my mind, one of the more pivotable issues in my gaming career.  Given that it is a perfect "first issue" of a NEW collection of Dragons sent to me by Eric Harshbarger. Eric contacted me a few weeks back to ask about some extras and gaps in my collection.  I mentioned that most of the Dragons I have are collected from larger lots of game materials I buy and most times they are in pretty sad shape. So he offered to send me some.  There are some duplicates with my collection, but these are in much better shape.  So if you can pop on over to his website.  Thanks, Eric! Now it is time for your contribution to This Old Dragon!

Ok. Where to start with this one? First, of course, is that cover.  It is great to see it here next to me instead of having to go to my CD-ROM to get the PDF (which is good since the PDF scan is not as good).  It is a wonderful, and surprisingly thigh-less, effort by Clyde Caldwell.   I always loved Caldwell's work and this cover is no exception. I love that Dragon sneaking down on the cross-eyed fighter.  Ok, he isn't cross-eyed, but it always looks like he is when I first look at it!  At least the dwarf sees it.  But my attention is focused on the witch in the background.  Is she a witch?  Well to me she is and she was one of the subconscious elements I would later use for my own witch character Larina.

Witch by Clyde Caldwell, Larina by Jacob Blackmon

So the red hair, purple dress with cloak and hood, the necklace (though different), the bangles on the wrists. Pretty archetypical image items really. But that image stuck with me.  I'd say it was Larina's mother, but I always pictured her as a blonde!  Maybe my little witch is having adventures I don't know about!  So this is what I can say when I have a cover to actually look at!

We are not quite at that "golden age" of Dragon that I think everyone is nostalgic about.  OR maybe we are.  When I say "Golden Age" maybe you all have a different picture in mind. Anyway.  This is the time before I started buying Dragon.  I have no doubt however that this is the first one I ever saw.

Out on a Limb covers some letters on Ed Greenwood's article on Firearms a few issues back. Everytime I pick up an older Dragon my mental timeline of Ed's involvement gets pushed back a little bit more.  I REALLY did not give this guy enough credit.

Gary is up next with his Guest Editorial. Ok...what to say about this.  It is basically a 3-page rant against GAMA and Origins.   I am happy to say that things are better between GenCon and Origins, and in about a decade from this original publication Gen Con and Origins will host a co-Con, but for now Gary is really irritated.  I don't know what is going on behind the scenes at this point. Back then I would have read this and been firmly on Gary's side, but today it seems like an old man yelling at clouds (and to be 100% fair here, Gary at this point is younger than I am right now!)  Ok. Moving on.

Blastoff! gives us all the information we need to know about the brand new Star Frontiers game.  We get to see that iconic Larry Elmore cover for what I think is the first time. We learn the about the new races (Vrusk, Yazirians, and Dralasites), a bit on the new character creation system and some of the in-universe background.  We also get some background on the game itself.  Design work began in 1979 by Dave Cook and  Lawerence Schick and spent the next two years in design, development and playtesting.  I guess there was a more "hard core" version of the game at one point.

Gary is back and this time with a classic.  From the Sorceror's Scroll covers Character Classes to Consider.  We learn that there will be an expansion volume to AD&D.  This book will eventually become Unearthered Arcana but until then he gives us a sneak peak.  We know now that all of these classes did not make it to that book.  Some would later go on to be rumored for the 2nd Edition of the AD&D game; or rather the 2nd Edition as penned by Gygax himself.  This is one of the main articles that +Joseph Bloch would later use to build his "what-if" version of a Gygax 2nd Edition in Adventures Dark and Deep.

Rob Kuntz is next with another installment of Greyhawk's World.  This covers Events of the Eastern and Southern Flanaess. I always enjoyed these articles. It made me feel like the World of Greyhawk was a living place, even though at this point I was still very much entrenched in the Known World of the D&D Basic and Expert sets.

Feel like I am dropping names left and right here, but after that we have Len Lakofka's Leomund's Tiny Hut.  This issue Len is focused on Keep(ing) Track of Quality.  Or how the quality of the goods affect the price, time to make and how that can play out for the player character.  This article covers mostly sheilds, armor, and some weapons.  A bit of converting for AC and you have a good article you can still use today.

Almost the counterpoint to weapon quality is character quality.  Christopher M. Townsend presents a new proficiency system for use in AD&D in Weapons Wear Out, Not Skills. This system is neither as complicated as the ones will later get nor as crunchy.  In fact, this system is light on the crunch and heavy on the role-playing aspects.  Or at least insofar as training in general in AD&D was a roleplaying aspect.  Now your training has some other purposes and can take longer.   Rereading it now I can see using this as a guideline in my D&D 3.x and D&D 5 games.

Gary is back again with some new creatures. These Featured Creatures are considered to be official AD&D^TM monsters, so that takes care of that argument (but opens it up for the next batch!).  We get two good-aligned monsters, the Baku and the Phoenix.  Both of these monsters will appear in the Monster Manual II due out soon.  But that is not what grabbed me about them.  Flipping the page something burrowed deep, deep into my psyche.

To me, the Phoenix was a god-like creature.  They were the natural enemies of darkness and chaos.  The mere look of one could destroy a vampire.  They were not some giant bird to be hunted for their feathers and beaks, they were divine agents of rightous wrath.  In many ways they were the opposite of the Dragons.  Yes, we have good Dragons, but the Phoenix (capitalization is mine and for emphasis) opposed the evil Dragons more.  I remember reading this issue from friends (sometimes many, many times) and at one point I wrote down "It was a time of great chaos. It was the time of the Dragon and the Phoenix."  Yes, yes I know there is a Chinese dish of the same name, trust me, growing up in the deep mid-west in the 70s and 80s the only Chinese I ever saw was "Chop Suey".  I would only later the myths and stories behind it.  The Dragon and the Phoenix became something BIG in my games.  So big in fact that I would later take some of those ideas and adapt to my Buffy the Vampire Slayer game and run a campaign I called The Dragon and the Phoenix.  Those games would later be the basis of my Ghosts of Albion RPG.

Ok, speaking of those dragons.  Richard Alan Lloyd gives us The Missing Dragons. Based on the "color wheel theory" he decides that there must be more dragons, the Yellow, Orange, and Purple.  Now few articles were as controversial in my early days as this one!  There were people that hated the idea of more dragons. There were people that hated the idea of these colors for dragons (this group though usually let the Purples in) and there were those that liked them but would not include them since they were not "official" AD&D monsters.  And of courses there those that liked them and used them.  Myself, I liked the idea. I thought the logic was faulty. I mean are there Draconic Evolutionary theorists of the RGB sort versus the CMYK ones?  I did use the Purple dragons once or twice.  I used an orange one once and I said the yellow had all died out.  The biggest issue with this article is Tiamat.  She has five heads, not eight. If we limit it to five, then the green head needs to become yellow.  Now there are many, many (MANY) other dragons in D&D now and Tiamat is still just five-headed.  So maybe I need to bring these back to my games.

An ad for the RPGA.

Dropping more names Lew Pulsipher is next with a new NPC character class, Timelords. These are not your two-heart, regenerating Time Lords.  These are more like Time Protectors or Time Guardians.   They are fighters with some basic time manipulation magic that gets more powerful as they go up in level. When I first read it I hated it.  I also used to have a pretty hard core rule in my D&D games of "No Time Travel!"  I have loosened up a bit on that over the years.

Next is Monsters of the Midway, BUT I don't have it in my copy.  So the rules state I must move on.

Ah, here is something else that wormed it's way into my psyche.  Robin Emrys Atkinson presents the Tuatha De Danaan, A revised Celtic Mythos.  With amateur drunk day Saint Patrick's Day in a couple of days, this is another reason why this is a good choice. This is designed to replace and add to the section on Celtic myths in the Deities and Demigods book. And it is much better.  It was here that I went into a HUGE Celtic myths kick that I never really got out of.

And the hits keep comming!  Ed Greenwood (I feel like I am the MC of a Night of Thousand Stars) is next with Law of the Land. A six page article on the legal system and political systems of the AD&D world.  Or as I like to think of it, the PCs do not live in a vacuum. Also a great system-free article and something to help curb the influx of Murder-Hoboism in your games.

Lew Pulsipher is back again (!) and takes a D&D (not AD&D) perspective on War! and how it can give the characters reason to "live".  Again this is a very system free sort of article and covers the types of wars that PCs might find themselves in.  Very usuful stuff.

Some Top Secret information from James "Pong" Thompson. It covers recon and assassinations.

An editiorial of sorts from Lew Pulsipher in Up on a Soapbox. In this, he discusses the difference between the Classical Role-player and the Romantic.  Lew is coming from a solid Wargamer point of view here.  I don't get the feeling that either of these types are bad, just they have certain ways of playing.  More the point in a Wargame if you can identify their style you will know how to defeat them since you know what risks they are likely to take.

The Dragon's Augury has some reviews including one of the first Computer games I can recall being reviewed.  WIZARDRY costs a then princely sum of $49.95 and you will need an Apple II computer with 48k and DOS 3.3. 
Tom Watson reviews some books for Traveller while Gary Gygax himself reviews Empire Builder by Mayfair games (he loves it).

Comics are next.
Phil and Dixie talk about how much Fantasy and SciFi are alike.
Wormy is only one page.

An ad for Chaosium's Trollpak takes half of Dragon mirth's page.  I always wanted that. It looked cool. 

Back cover has an ad for Grenadier Models and flip over for Gang Busters.

Wow. What a packed issue.  Not just name after name of the whos who of the early RPG scenes, but great content as well.

Want to know what I thought of White Dwarf from the same time? Check out White Dwarf Wednesday #33.  It was also a good issue.

Kickstarter Pros and Cons

If you have not read it yet please go over to Tenkar's Tavern and read his posts on Kickstarter.

If you are considering supporting one you should read it.  If you are considering starting one then you certainly need to read it.

http://www.tenkarstavern.com/search/label/kickstarter

Here is the point I am getting in all of this.  Unless your game is close to being done I am not likely to suport the Kickstarter.   I gladly supported Eden Studios on their ConX and AFMBE kickstarters because I knew where they were on things.  I was a play tester, I had seen the doc files, I had even seen some concept art.  I knew they were well on the way.

This is also why I am confident in backing Adventures Dark & Deep.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/623939691/adventures-dark-and-deep-players-manual

Joe has a lot of the work done. He has said on the page things are written and he is looking for some art.  That is cool with me.  Art is expensive.  I am certain that a Hardbound copy of AD&D will be on my shelves in the future.

I am not going to support projects though that still need to be written or developed.  To much of a risk.
By my count I am still owed about $150 worth of RPG products that I might never see. So my next $5 is going to come a lot slower.

Class Struggles: Cthonic Warlocks and The Return of Tharizdûn

Working through my "end game" for my Come Endless Darkness campaign.  Like the Gygax book of the same name my main Big Bad is Tharizdûn.  Also like the books I am sure that the universe is going to look very different when I am done.

Through the various adventures, the big plot emerging is that Orcus, Lolth, Yeegnohu and others are taking advantage of the death of all the Sun Gods, but no one has yet confirmed or not if they have any actual involvement in it. They suspect Orcus.

In truth it is all going to be Tharizidûn.  This is something I have built up over the last couple of campaigns.  The "Dragonslayers" (the generation before the "Order of the Platinum Dragon") uncovered the Forgotten Temple of Tharizdûn.  His big plan, of course, is to get free.

Currently, I have him in a cage deep in the lowest part of the Nine Hells. Asmodeus is still his jailer and in many ways is the very first Warlock of Tharizdûn.  He has been siphoning off Tharizdûn's power for centuries, it is how he took control of Hell in fact.  But Tharizdûn knows this and while Asmodeus has been doing this, Tharizdûn has been pulling him deeper and deeper into his thrall.

In my games Tharizdûn also has another title, "The Whispering God".  This comes from his warlocks who say their god whispers in their ears and tells them secrets. And convinces them to do terrible things.  He is also known as the Elder Elemental Eye and worshiped by elemental-demon cults. He is also worshiped by the Drow that do not follow Lolth.

Recently Strange Brew: Warlocks was released.  It includes a version of the Whispering God that I used in my games. I am particularly proud of it to be honest.

WARLOCK PATRON: THE WHISPERING GOD
Deep in forgotten tombs, hidden in forsaken forests, and haunting long-abandoned churches of long-dead gods, you can hear it. It is soft, but it is there. Once you hear it, then it is always with you—day and night, sleeping and waking. It is the voice of the Whispering God. No one is for sure who or what the Whispering God is.
There are no churches or priests dedicated to him. No stories of creation. No heroes. No tales of battles. Just the constant whispering. Those warlocks who follow this entity are blessed and cursed: blessed with great power and cursed with the voice of their patron in their ears forever. No one knows what the Whispering God wants or even why he/it needs warlocks and not clerics.
The speculation is that he is a god trapped in prison so dark and so perfect only his voice can escape, but just barely. He needs these warlocks to spread the word so he can escape. Others claim that the god is nothing more than the madness that will consume all “his” warlocks.

For Pathfinder this is a "Cthonic" Patron.  For D&D 5 this would be an "Old One".
For my players, it means trouble.

Here is a Cthonic Tradition for the Basic Era Witch.

New Tradition: Cthonic

Witches of the Cthonic Tradition honor and some say are slaves of, very, very ancient powers. Some are inhuman powers from beyond our reality and understanding. Some are ancient Primordial Beigns from before the times of gods or mortals. A few are Dead Gods whose worship continues and whose power remains.

More so than any other witches, these are most often called Warlocks.

Role: These witches and warlocks represent a tie to the ancient past or to other unworldly powers.  They represent classical villains or the scholar that has delved too deep into things that mortals were never meant to know.

Joining this Tradition: To join one must either discover the Cthonic Patron of be discovered by one.  For example, the Cult of the Whispering God hears their Patron's whispers when they uncover hidden knowledge about the God or venture deep into areas that were formerly His centers of worship.

These witches tend to be Solitaries or be involved in small cults.
They are for the most part are chaotic, with some gravitating towards neutral. Rare is the lawful Cthonic witch, but it is not unheard of.

Leaving this Tradition: Often there is no way to leave this tradition; not even in death.

Occult Powers
Minor - 1st Level: Grimoire. The warlock does not gain a familiar like other witches, but rather a semi-aware tome known as a Grimoire.  These tomes replace the Book of Shadows for these witches. These Grimoires are often sought after by occultist, magic-users.

Lesser - 7th Level: Immune to Fear. Exposed to so many horrors or alien minds warps the mind of the warlock to a point where normal fear has no effect on them.  Magical fear is also given a -4 bonus on saves.

Medial - 13th Level:  Alien Mind. The Cthonic witch has become so accustomed to dealing with alien and ancient minds that she becomes immune to charm and hold spells. Her mind can't be probed or read via telepathy, ESP or similar powers.

Greater - 19th Level: Curse. The warlock can place a powerful Curse on a single creature. She can only do this once per day (for a single creature). The curse can be of any sort, but usually the curse will bestow a -4 to all to-hit rolls and -2 to any saving throws. Other curses may be allowed, such as the Bestow Curse spell. Witch curses are quite powerful and require the use of two (2) remove curse spells to be fully removed.

Major - 25th Level: Shape Change. Once per day, the witch may change her shape to any type of aberrant monster, like the spell Shape Change. For 1 turn per level, the witch may move freely back and forth between her aberration and human forms. Once the form is chosen, that is the only form she can use for the day. So, a witch may choose to change between the forms of human and a roper but cannot go between roper, human and bird. Once the duration has expired, the witch reverts back to human form.  The witch does not have the special abilities of the aberant form save for those that she can manage with the form.  So the roper's tentacles would be replicated, but not the basts of a Sphere of Many Eyes.

Superior - 31st Level: Apotheosis.  The witch becomes something else. This new form and powers are dependent on the Patron she serves.  For witches of the Whispering God her voice barley rises above a whisper, but her voice can be used as a Command spell once per day, a Charm spell 3 times per day, and a suggestion seven times per day.


---
I am up for an ENnie this year for Best Blog!
Please click on the link and vote "1" under "The Other Side".

Character Writeup Page updated

So I have something like a 1000 things to do, but to help clear out my head I updated my Character writeups page.
http://timbrannan.blogspot.com/p/characters-and-builds.html

They are sorted by character or property. One day I really need to sort them by game system too.

Until then here is a list of the systems I have used to stat up these characters.  Maybe there is something you like here.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons
AD&D  1st Ed.
Adventures Dark & Deep
Adventures in Oz RPG
Amazing Adventures
Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea
B/X Companion
Barbarians of Lemuria
BASH
Basic D&D
BECMI + Glantri Gazetteer
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) 2r
Big Eyes, Small Mouth (BESM) 3.0
C. J. Carella's WitchCraft RPG
Cartoon Action Hour, Season 2
Cartoon Action Hour, Season 3
Castles & Crusades
Chill, 1st Edition (Pacesetter)
Chill, 2nd Edition
Cinematic Unisystem
Cortex
Cortex Plus (Smallville)
DC Adventures
DC Heroes (Mayfair)
Dirty Nellie
Doctor Who: Adventures in Time and Space
Ghosts of Albion
Icons
Marvel Heroic Roleplay
Meddling Kids
Mutants and Masterminds, 2nd Edition
Mutants and Masterminds, 3rd Edition
OVA
Pathfinder
Quest of the Ancients
Savage Worlds
Spellcraft & Swordplay
Superbabes
Supers Unleashed
True20
Victoria RPG
Victoriana
Villains & Vigilantes
Witch Girls Adventures

40+. Not too bad.
Would love to throw a few more into that mix.

If you throw in my Willow & Tara page then I can add these too:

C.J. Carella's WitchCraft
Amazing Adventures
BASH!
Big Eyes, Small Mouth, 2ndEdition
Big Eyes, Small Mouth, 3rd Edition
Big Eyes, Small Mouth d20 (and SAS d20)
Call of  Cthulhu
Cartoon Action Hour, Season 2
Chill
Cortex
d20 Modern
DC Heroes (Mayfair)
Doctor Who Adventures in Time and Space
Fudge / Now Playing
Icons
Kult
Macho Women with Guns (Original and d20)
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (Cortex+)
Mutants and Masterminds, 2nd Edition
Mutants and Masterminds, 3rd Edition
OVA
Savage Worlds
Slasher Flick: Director's Cut
Superbabes: The Femforce RPG
True20 / Blue Rose
Villains & Vigilantes
Witch Girls Adventures
World of Darkness (old)
World of Darkness (new)

Any system you would like to see me try next?
Any character you would like me to try next?

Amazing Adventures: Plays Well With Others

The best thing, or at least one of the best things, about Amazing Adventures is the fact that it is based all around Castles & Crusades.  So not only is everything for C&C compatible with it, everything that works great with C&C also works for Amazing Adventures.

This means a lot of classic AD&D adventures can be played with little conversions needed.

Ravenloft

I spent some time this past weekend going through the original I6 Ravenloft Module.  Pretty much everything in the adventure is covered in the Amazing Adventure Rules.  In fact things might work out a little bit better.  Imagine your party of world travelling adventurers. You have a big game hunter, a scientist, a gadgeteer, maybe a socialite.  All travelling by train to some dark corner of Eastern Europe.  That is till the mists roll in and train has to stop.  A carriage comes to pick you up and takes you to small village of Barovia where is looks like time has stood still.  People are fearful of you. Soon you learn of the castle in the mountains and the Lord of the castle is inviting you to dinner.

Count Strahd von Zarovich
Vampire
NO. ENCOUNTERED: 1
SIZE: Medium
HD: 14d12 (84 hp)
MOVE: 40 ft., 60 ft. (fly), 20 ft. (climb)
AC: 25 (cloak, ring of protection)
ATTACKS: Slam (1d6)
SPECIAL: Blood Drain, Children of the Night, Dominate, Create Spawn, Energy Drain, Alternate Form, Gaseous Form, Entourage, Electrical Resistance (half), Spider Climb
SANITY: 1d8/1d10
SAVES: M, P
INT: Genius
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Evil
TYPE: Undead
XP: 10450+14 (10534)

Additionally Strahd can cast spells as an 10th level Arcane Spellcaster (Int based). He is protected by a ring of protection and an amulet that prevents him from being turned.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks

If Hammer Horror is not to your liking then change the location to the deep jungles of South America or Africa and replace the castle with a crashed spaceship.

Expedition to the Barrier Peaks is one of the odder adventures out there, and certainly one of the most fun for my money.  The high tech works just as well on the characters of the Pulp era as they do on quasi-medieval fantasy.  But AA offers something a bit more to the mix.

First off I replaced the Mind Flayers in the adventure with a malevolent type of Grey.  When the adventurers arrive the ship is just waking up and will soon begin it's conquest of the world.  The Pulp Era though predates "saucer men" by a few years at least in the public consciousness.  Compare for example the serials of the 30s vs. that of the 50s in how aliens were depicted and treated.
If you want pure pulp action then replace the creatures in the modules with the various Lovecraft Mythos monsters found in the book.  Mind Flayers afterall have a vaguely "Cthulhu-ness" about them anyway.  Fill it full of shoggoths and Spawn of Shub-Niggurath. The plant spawn make for good vegipygmies.
Add more fun and have it so the ship had crashed into the Earth 65 Billion years ago and have all these dinosaurs in stasis.  That is of course until the ship systems start to wake up.

The Isle of Dread

A monster romp on a tropical island. The Isle of Dread has far more in common with the 1933 King Kong than it does with fantasy swordplay.

The Amazing Adventures core book already has a number of dinosaurs (and the d20SRD has more) and monsters that work well with this adventure.  Plus going by steam liner makes much more sense for our Pulp Adventurers.   Isle of the Dread is essentially a "Lost World" sort of adventure and that fits the Pulp story telling perfectly.

What About Guns?
Ok so our intrepid Pulp adventurers will fight vampires, aliens and dinosaurs. Unlike their fantasy counterparts they will be armed with guns instead of swords.

This is not a problem.

As we have seen in movies time and time again a gun is not very effective against the undead.  A pistol is about as effective (pro and con) as an arrow against a rampaging dino or giant beast. And in Barrier Peaks? Well they have the chance to find "ray guns".  So guns may not really give the character the edge you might think.

I am sure there are others that would work equally as well, but these are the big three genre-bending modules with roots near the pulp era.  In any case there is enough here to keep your players happy for a while even if they played these classics in the past.

Review: Trollpak (Troll Week)

In many ways, 1982's Trollpak from Chaosium (and then later Avalon Hill, then Chaosium again) is the reason for my decades-long fascination with trolls in RPGs.

Like many gamers my age, it was the ads in Dragon magazine where I first came in contact with Trollpak. The ads were quite effective too.  Going back to Dragon #65 we get a dissected troll with it's guts all hanging out.  Nothing like that EVER appeared in D&D.

Back then for some reason, I thought this product was for Tunnels & Trolls and not the very obvious RuneQuest.   Even when I learned the difference I still wanted to combine Trollpak with Tunnels & Trolls, something I am attempting to try this week.

Sadly I never knew any groups that was playing RuneQuest so getting my hands on one to view was non-existent.  And my gaming dollar was stretched as it was back then, so buying it blind for my D&D games seemed a bit of a risk for me. 

Reading over the PDF now and some of the very few reviews I see that I certainly missed out and wonder what my trolls would be like today had I owned this back in the 80s.  These days I think I am fairly set in my ways, but is still there is so much here to use.  So let's get into it 

Trollpak (Chaosium, 1982)

For this review, I am considering the PDF version of Trollpak that is currently being sold on DriveThruRPG.  This is a reprint of the original Trollpak from 1982.

216 pages, color covers, black & white/monchrome interior art.

By Greg Stafford and Sandy Petersen for Runequest 2nd Edition.

The original box set of Trollpak contained three books (the "pak" part); Uz Lore, Book of Uz, and Into Uzdom.  The PDF combines all three into a single file.  The PDF was released in 2019.

The books correspond to the PDF sections, "Troll Legends and Natural History", "Creating and Playing Troll Characters", and "Adventures in Trolls Lands" respectively.

Uz is the name the trolls of Glorantha give themselves and how their creation is central to the lore of the world.  Already this set is going to be the sort of deep-dive into a topic that you know I love.

On the very first page, we get an "in-universe" side-bar about how trolls living near or amongst humans begin to become more human-like and how both groups eventually take on an equilibrium.  

This sets the stage for this book in two very important ways.

1. This book is steeped in the lore and legends of Glorantha. So teasing out pieces to use in other games might be trickier than I first expected.
2. These trolls are NOT one-dimensional collections of hit points and potential XP and treasure.  If you prefer your monsters to be mindless evil races to just kill then this book will be wasted on you. 

Book 1: Uz Lore, Troll Legends and Natural History

We get right into the myths and legends of the Uz people/trolls.  We get a feel right away since we get a listing of the Seven Sacred Ancestors of the Uz even before the Gods.  It is right before the Gods sure, but the importance of these ancestors is emphasized. We learn that "Uz" means "the folk" in the Uz language. So the Mistress Trolls (akin to the troll mother race) are the Uzuz.  Dark Trolls, the corrupted "evil" trolls are the Uzko. And so on. Speaking of the language we also learn that the mother tongue of the trolls is a debased form of the "Darktongue." So in D&D terms "Trollspeak" could be a corrupted form of "Abyssal" or something like that. I think in old forms of D&D anyone who spoke the Chaos alignment language could speak to trolls.  

Speaking of Chaos.  The Law - Chaos access is also present in RuneQuest, though not as an alignment as in D&D but as elemental forces.  Another clue that these are your D&D trolls comes up that trolls are often seen as agents of Chaos WHEN IN FACT they were really some of the first victims. 

Let that sink in for bit.  If that were published today there is a certain segment of the hobby that would be screaming that they don't want "social justice" politics in their games.  But this is from 1982, from two of the titans of the RPG industry.  

The section continues with more history and recounting of great troll battles. There is a quasi-academic feel to this and that is really fun.   An example is an experiment a troll researcher did on a troll and a trollkin (a smaller version of troll) in which they were locked in a room with various items and the researcher recorded what they ate.  The point here is that Uz trolls can eat and will eat almost anything. 

We learn there are many kinds of trolls (as to be expected). The Mistress Race is the mother race of all trolls. They are ancient and wise and claim to predate all other races and even the world itself.  The other races of trolls are the Dark Trolls (your stock evil trolls), great trolls, cave trolls, sea trolls, and the diminutive trollkin.

We even get details on troll senses and how they differ from humans. Differences in trolls from region to region. Even a troll evolutionary tree and "prehistoric" troll cave painting and idols, there is even a six-breasted "Venus of Willendorf" style troll idol of the troll mistress race.

There is even details on the types of pets trolls keep. 

There is far more detail about trolls in this 64 page section than in all five editions of (A)D&D.

Nearly everything in the section is system neutral.  While it is tied to the world mythology at a fundamental level, it can be used in any game.

Book 2: Book of Uz, Creating and Playing Troll Characters

This section/book is all about creating a troll character to play in RuneQuest.  Before we delve into this let's have a look at this from "Playing Trolls,"

It is tempting to use trolls as monsters with weapons.

However, they are intelligent creatures who have survived despite gods and men. Several traits set them apart from humans as well, and they naturally exploit those special traits to their advantage. You should do so as well.

D&D players may have issues with playing races as evil or not, but RuneQuest had it figured out in 1982.

You can randomly roll which troll sub-species your character is from, with a 1% chance you are from the Mistress Troll race and 63% chance you are a miserable little trollkin.  Adjustments for all the types are given. Your troll can be wild, semi-civilized, or civilized. You can roll for social rank and equipment.  You can even see what starting spells you have since all trolls have some magic. You can even figure out what you were before you became an adventurer. 

Trolls are a matriarchal culture. So various home habits are focused around this.  For example, the more husbands a troll leader has, the higher her social standing. Looks like my troll character Grýlka gets to pick out a couple of husbands!

BTW, I LOVE the troll greeting when offering you hospitality in their lair.  They cover your head with a blanket or hide and say "I extend my darkness to protect you."  I am totally going to use that in my next adventure. 

Some gods are covered next and their worship. They have goddesses and gods of spiders, darkness, insects (very important to troll life), and the hunt. There is even a goddess of healing.

Coverage of domesticated giant insects is also covered since these creatures often serve the same function as domestic mammals in human life. 

Some new troll types are also covered.

This section by it's very nature is more rules-focused, but there is still so much here that is just good that it can, and should, be used in any other FRPG.

Book 3: Into Uzdom, Adventures in Trolls Lands

This section covers going on adventures in lands inhabited or controlled by the Uz. 

This section is very rules-focused as well with the first part covering random encounters in troll lands. 

There are also sample/small adventures like "The Caravans" which details a troll caravan of a heard of giant beetles.  Imagine this long train of trolls, some in wagons, others walking and in between hundreds of giant beetles being led like cattle in a long line.  Quite a sight really.  Another is traveling to a troll village and NOT treat everyone like a walking collection of HP.  This one is fantastic really for all the troll alcohol available and whether or not your human character can handle any of them in a drinking challenge. 

There are five larger adventures here and several smaller ideas for seeds.  The best thing though is the inclusion of a "mini-game" of Trollball.  This game is played like football and is supposed to be a reenactment of a battle from the dawn of time.  The "trollball" itself used to be a now extinct insect so other things have been used like badgers and in rare occurrences a bear, but most often it is a trollkin.   The teams each have seven players and one can be a great troll.  They are sponsored by a Rune Lord.

The game is brutal and sometimes deadly, but since there is a religious element to the game anyone killed on the field is brought back to life by the gods whom the game honors. Full stats for the Sazdorf Wackers and Tacklers is included so players can try their own hand at Trollball, but warning, the troll gods might not raise a dead human. 

There is just so much to love about this product. It is jammed packed full of ideas.  Part of me wants to adapt my D&D trolls to use these rules and another part of me wants to insert the Uz as-is into D&D as their own race or something akin to High Trolls.  

Trolpak was updated in 1990 when RuneQuest was being published by Avalon Hill.  It was then split into the Trollpak and Troll Gods. 

The "new" pdf restores all the content back to the 1982 edition. 

Reading it now after so many years I am struck with a couple of thoughts. The first is what would have happened to my own games had I picked this up and used it in my games?  Would my trolls today have a decidedly Uz flavor about them?  What else would have changed?

Also, reviews in Dragon Magazine for this are glowing and heap high praise on this book and they called it a leap in game design.  It was, but it was not a leap everyone would take.  RuneQuest/Chaosium did this for trolls like Chill/Pacesetter had done for Vampires.  There are s few others I can think of.  Orkworld did it for Orcs for example.  But still, these sorts of deep explorations are rare. 

So if you are over one-dimensional monsters and are ready to expand your options then this is for you.

If you are RuneQuest player of any edition then this is also something you should have.