Review: Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales (AD&D 2nd)

A couple of caveats. I love Victorian RPGs.  Also, I primarily reviewing the PDF release.

Wizards of the Coast and their partner DNDClassics.com has released the latest PDF from the TSR/WotC back catalog, this time a product I know very, very well.

Masque of the Red Death and Other Tales is nominally released under the Ravenloft line and you will need one of the Ravenloft core books to be able to play this along with the AD&D 2nd Edition rules.  However if you know the AD&D rules well enough you might be able to get by.  The premise of the game it rather a simple one. What if the Dark Powers from Ravenloft found their way to Earth?  Well...I should state out and out that they never actually say that, but imply it rather heavily.  The is a dark, malignant force controlling things on Earth, known here as The Red Death, and this Earth of the 1890s certainly has a lot more in common with Ravenloft.

Pretty much from the time it was published to the onset of the new 3rd Edition rules, Masque of the Red Death was my campaign world of choice.  I still played AD&D2 in Ravenloft, or rather, I ran AD&D2 in Ravenloft, but the lines between Ravenloft proper and "Gothic Earth" became very, very blurry.

For this review I am going to talk specifically about the PDF and only discussing the original boxed set format when appropriate.

To begin with we get five PDFs in this package. These correspond to the four books and the DM's screen.

Book I is the main Masque of the Red Death book.  It is 130 pages of a high quality, OCR scan.  Some the images are fuzzy, but I feel that is more due to the source images rather than the scan itself.  The scan comes in at just over 35 meg.
We begin with an overview of what this campaign guide is about.  I might be mistaken, but this is the first official AD&D product to take place on Earth.   This followed up with a history of Gothic Earth.  Things began to go downhill for everything around 2700 BC when Imhoptep (yes, same as the Mummy movies) began experimenting with darker magics.  The next dozen or so pages bring us to the present day (1890s).  The history is a fast read and I would not ignore it. It sets the tone for the entire game.
Chapter II details character creation.  There are different methods used than the PHB to reflect that characters are not your sword wielding barbarians of a bygone age.  So characters are more average.
There are rough parallels to all the classic AD&D classes, Soldiers, Adepts, Mystics, and Tradesmen.  The AD&D Proficiency system is used here as well.  Interestingly the system seems make more sense here (since skills are really what sets characters apart) but also shows its wear and tear.
Money and Equipment is also detailed in Chapter IV.   Interestingly this one of the few Victorian era games where the default currency is listed as American Dollars rather than Pounds Sterling.
It should be of note that this also the book that adds guns to AD&D2.  Quite a number of guns are detailed here as well.
Chapter V covers magic and you really need the Player's Handbook for this section.
Chapter VI covers the changes to combat.
Getting back to what really makes this special is Chapter VII An Atlas of Gothic Earth. I should point out at this point that the large poster sized map that came with the boxed set is not included here.  It gives a brief overview of the world.  This section is done much better in the full fledged product that shares it's name.
The first Appendix covers various character kits.  If you remember 2e at all, you remember kits. Quite a few interesting ideas are detailed, but you could also do these with the base four classes and good roleplaying.
Appendix II covers some villains of Gothic Earth. There are plenty of old favorite here and some new takes on old characters.  Though I will admit the one thing that still gets on my nerves is Moriarty re-done as a Rakshasa.  In my games he was human. And yes, Dracula is there as well.
And finally Appendix III covers adventuring in Gothic Earth.

Book II is an adventure in 3 parts by future Pinnacle Entertainment head honcho Shane Hensley and featuring the rock star of Gothic fiction, Dracula.  The advantage of this PDF over my boxed set copy? I can print this out and make changes to it. Yeah it is a good adventure, but I can't help but feel it is a pastiche of Hammer and Stoker's original work.

Book III is a Jack the Ripper adventure, Red Jack. Unlike Moriarty's change into a supernatural creature, this adventure make "Jack" into something more mundane.  Normally I would be fine this, but the name of the adventure itself and some of the elements BEGS it to be tied to the old Star Trek episode The Wolf in The Fold and Redjac.

Book IV is the Red Death, an adventure based around elements of the Edgar Allen Poe story.  Some details have been changed and added, but the spirit is the same.  Again, I am tempted to make the main antagonist, Prospero, the Prospero.

Book V is the DM's screen.

Again I'll point out that the large poster sized map is missing.

Once upon a time this boxed captured my imagination like no other game.  This PDF makes me want to crack open some 2e.

Seven Wonders - Examining the Witches of the d20 Era

Strange Brew: The Ultimate Witch & Warlock Kickstarter will go live again tomorrow.

Today I want to spend some time talking about the Seven (yes, 7!) Witch classes that have appeared for the d20 game in various shape and forms. I want to discuss their pros and cons, and why Strange Brew: The Ultimate Witch will be all the better for it.

Witch #1: The DMG Witch – Wizards of the Coast
Let's not forget that the very first witch was a "sample" character in the 3.0 edition DMG. She was basically a sorcerer with a different spell list. She dropped some of the iconic damage spells of the wizard in favor of some minor Cleric spells. I always considered this the baseline witch. Though since it was not in the SRD, I avoided reading about it. When working on Liber Mysterium back in the day, I was very, very strict about what I would read. In fact, I have a spreadsheet full of spells, and I would have discussions on what was and was not a witch spell. In the end, I ended up with a list that was not too unlike the witch spell list in the DMG, but I have tons of documentation of how I got to that point—we were more concerned back then that WotC was going to stomp out any d20 infraction they found. Still glad I did all the work, though. I was able to go back to it for all my other witch books.
I still use that very same spreadsheet. Maybe I could share it someday, if people are curious about how I go about doing this sort thing.

Witch #2: Liber Mysterium - Timothy S. Brannan
Back when d20 and OGL was still new (2001), I began updating all my notes on witches for publication quality book. This book became known as Liber Mysterium, and was released in 2003. There are a lot of things I REALLY liked about this book. There were a few things I really wanted to do with witches that became a lot easier with the d20 rules. In particular, I had a bunch of “Kiss” spells that had more effectiveness because they were delivered with a kiss. With d20, that became a metamagic feat. Coven spells were covered well, as were occult powers. Though 10 years later, I can admit it was not perfect. There was my own overriding opinion that most witches were going to be good. My bias. While there are tons of spells, some were redundant or a little over- or under-powered, 10 years of playing witches in my ongoing 3.x game has helped me work out a lot of the bugs.
One of the coolest things from the this project though is it really taught me how to work with a team of designers.  I carried over these lessons to Buffy and to Ghosts of Albion.

Witch #3: The Witch's Handbook - Green Ronin; Author Steven Kenson
This one is certainly a great effort. There is a lot I really like about this book. The gems of this book are the ideas for skills, and, of course, the fantastic cover art by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. Like my own Liber Mysterium, this witch uses Wisdom to cast arcane spells. I still kinda like that, to be honest. There are a lot of nice prestige classes here. In particular were the Witch Priestess and the Witch's Champion, which was similar to something I  was calling the Cowan in my games. The Diabolic Witch and the Witch Hag were also nice and gave some balance to the "mostly good" Witch Priestess. There are new spells, and like Way of the Witch below, it uses the Ritual Casting rules from Relics & Rituals, which were very much in vogue at the time. Covens in this book were covered, but not as much as in Liber or Way of the Witch.
What this book lacks in page count, it makes up for in utility; there is something useful on every page. More to the point, there is something I wanted to use on every page.

Witch #4: Way of the Witch - Citizen Games; Authors Janet Pack, Jean Rabe, Megan Robertson, Christina Stiles
Style-wise this is the best of the lot of the early witch books for d20. Hardcover, with some of the most beautiful art I have seen in a book. I mean, go look at that Thomas Denmark cover.
The witch is basic and has a lot of really nice features. The prestige classes are simple, but functional, dividing the witch into white, black, grey, and brown witches. There are some other nice ideas, as well including how witches lived in this world and their much greater affinity to the magical rhythms of the world. The authors really took their time and care with this one, and it really shows.
There is so much I love about this book that it made want to make my own books better. The nice flow between the art and the text made this feel much more like a single creative endeavor. Even if the material wasn't good (and the material was good) it was a joy to look at. I bought this one before I was done with Liber Mysterium, but I put it up until Liber was out the door. I remember sitting in my car one afternoon to pick up my kids from daycare and wishing I had done some of the things in this book.
Alas, Citizen games did not make it out of the d20 boon alive. They were going to come out with a second witch book, Seasons of the Witch, and I had heard a little about it. I had high expectations really.

Witch #5: The Quintessential Witch – Mongoose Publishing; Author Robert Schwalb
I am not a huge fan of the older Mongoose books. There are number of issues with the classes being all over the place, odd editing, and art that runs the gambit. This book is not any different. The witch class is pretty typical of the time (early days of the d20 boom). There is a wide variety of prestige classes such as the Caller to the Veil, Diabolist, Gypsy Matron, Witch Doctor and even a Witch Hunter, which is nice, but not all of them are usable. For example I am not sure why the Medium has a Charisma loss, or why the Occultist spells are the way they are. The book also tends to be full of a lot clichés. The art for the Vamp prestige class comes to mind, actually the entire Vamp prestige class is pretty much a huge cliché. An evil woman scorned by a member of the opposite sex using her "feminine whiles" to corrupt others. Oh and lets show her in bed with an innocent looking girl. Not really forward thinking there.  Though the material that was good (Patron of the Five Sprits, Puppet Mistress), was very good. There is a good section on new uses for skills, including telling fortunes and a good section of feats. There are new spells and new magic items, as expected, but the coolest thing might be the Places of Power. I also liked the Times of Power and the very detailed Herbal section. What made the Herbal so nice was not all of the herbs used, but that the ones they did included art. It looked like an old-school herbal.

Witch #6: Pantheon and Pagan Faiths – Mystic Eye Games
This was part of Mystic Eye Games: Hunt the Rise of Evil product line. It was also a great effort, and it captured my attention early on. I liked this one because it was the other end of the spectrum from the Green Ronin one, but still not quite Way of the Witch - the book had an implied world setting with witches as a part of it, but not quite as integrated into the fabric of the world as we see in Way of the Witch. The witch still existed in a rich world, and a lot was expected of her. She had the spells and the powers to meet these expectations, too.
This witch was a divine spellcaster, not an arcane one. This was also a nice change of point of view.
I also liked the prestige classes. They were a nice selection of orders with Divine backgrounds and really what I wanted to see in a Prestige Class. The Furies of Destruction were similar to my own War Witch, but far more deadly. The Beast Friend looked like a fun class to try out for a Druid, but it's alignment restrictions (Lawful Good only) didn't quite make sense to me. Slaughter Priests should be in every game.

Witch #7: The Pathfinder Witch (Advanced Player’s Guide)
This is the current Witch. I have spoken about the pros and cons of this witch many times. But I have to admit what I really like are the Hexes. These are such a nice addition to the witch class. The Patrons here are very, very similar to the Patrons I used. Also, if I made the error of assuming that all witches are mostly good, I think this book has the bias that witches are mostly evil. I also can’t get past how weak the covens are in this book.

All seven (and some others here and there) all offer me something fun and unique to the game play. What I want now though is something that allows me to play all these experiences.

Or, to put it another way, the Ultimate Witch.

Zatannurday: DC Bombshells

The art of Ant Lucia is not only the focus of some of the new covers for this summer's DC books, but also today's Zatannurday post!

Originator of the DC Bombshells yo can see all his art and the statues of such DC Heroines and Zatanna, Black Canary, Wonder Woman and Batgirl.

The pinup covers are available in June.

But I thin my favorite one is for Batwoman.

I love that it looks like a baseball card.  Her number as 52 is just too perfect.

Witch items from other blogs

Not so much of a post today and more of a "hey lets share my research notes".  Here are a list of blogs, many of which you all know, and some items they have posted over the last few years on witches.  Some of these I use in game, others I have adapted to make them work better with my witches. But all I found interesting enough to save them in an unpublished till now post.

Do you know anymore?  If you do share them! I love reading other people's takes on witches, magic and everything like that.

A Paladin in Citadel
Um, I was promised Witches?
http://apaladinincitadel.blogspot.com/2011/04/um-i-was-promised-witches.html

Alien Shores
Mirror Demon
http://knightsky-alienshores.blogspot.com/2013/10/monster-monday-mirror-demon.html

Asshat Paladins
Edith the Harpy Witch
http://asshatpaladins.blogspot.com/2010/01/labyrinth-lord-npc-edith-witch.html

Beyond the Black Gate
Baba Yaga's Hut
http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/2010/08/baba-yagas-hut.html

Hathras, City of Dreams
http://beyondtheblackgate.blogspot.com/2010/09/omegea-atlas-hathras-city-of-dreams.html

B/X Blackrazor
His B/X Witch Class
http://bxblackrazor.blogspot.com/2011/05/bx-witch.html

Cross Planes
Witch Doves
http://crossplanes.blogspot.com/2014/04/a-to-z-challenge-w-is-for-witch-dove.html

D&D Next Witches
Maiden, Mother, and Crone

Dangerous Brian
Zama: The Drune
http://dangerousbrian.blogspot.com/2011/04/z-of-zama-drune.html

The Houri, Part 1 and Part 2
http://dangerousbrian.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-osric-class-houri-part-i.html
http://dangerousbrian.blogspot.com/2010/11/new-character-class-houri-part-ii.html

Dreams of the Lich House
Mythic Monday: The Witch
http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/2011/01/mythic-monday-witch.html

Any of the Gothic Greyhawk posts
http://dreamsinthelichhouse.blogspot.com/search/label/Gothic%20Greyhawk

Elfmaids & Octopi
d100 Witches
http://elfmaidsandoctopi.blogspot.com/2014/01/d100-witches.html

Greyhawk Grognard
Darker Paths II: The Witch
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2011/10/now-available-witch.html

Witch Preview #3: Familiar Names
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2008/07/witch-preview-3-familiar-names.html

Witch Class Preview: Evil Eye
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2008/07/witch-class-preview-evil-eye.html

Jaron's RANTs and RAVEs
[DND] Character Concept - WAR D&D: Witch Elf
http://jaron95.blogspot.com/2010/03/dnd-character-concept-war-d-witch-elf.html
Based on the WoW Witch Elf, they a close to what I would call a War Witch.

Realms of Chirak
B/X D&D Month XIV: Terragia, the Witch of Galitath
http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2014/04/bx-d-month-xiv-terragia-witch-of.html

Steve's Gamer Blog
Witches & Warlocks (4e)
http://stevesgamerblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/witches-warlocks.html

Scarecrows Part 1 and Part 2

Heroes of the Feywild Preview: Pixie and Witch
http://stevesgamerblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/heroes-of-feywild-preview-pixie-and.html

Strange Magic
Witch for B/X D&D
http://strangemagic.robertsongames.com/2012/03/witch-for-bx-d.html

Tower of the Archmage
New magic Item: Summoner's Candles
http://towerofthearchmage.blogspot.com/2014/03/new-magic-item-summoners-candles.html

New Monster: Fear Gorta
http://towerofthearchmage.blogspot.com/2014/03/new-monster-fear-gorta.html

Venger's old school gaming blog
D&D Ouija or RPG Witch-Board
http://vengersatanis.blogspot.com/2013/11/d-ouija-or-rpg-witch-board.html
Not really playing a witch, but a cool idea if you have a lot of supernatural characters in the mix.

What a Horrible Night to Have a Curse
Beast of the Week: Witch
http://lordgwydion.blogspot.com/2012/11/beast-of-week-witch.html

Updates:

Playing D&D With Porn Stars
D100 Witch Traits
http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2014/08/d100-witch-traits.html

Rachel Bonuses
Fey-touched Background for 5e
http://rachelghoulgamestuff.blogspot.com/2014/08/in-which-5e-background-is-introduced.html

From the Sorcerer's Skull
Witches of Ix
http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2014/08/witches-of-ix.html

The Manor #6 is out

What happens when +Tim Shorts of Gothridge Manor and The Manor books mixes my witches with Dylan Hartwell's Big Book of Spiders and one of +matt jackson's maps?

You get one creepy ass adventure!

Witches of the Dark Moon is a low level adventure featured in The Manor #6, the latest in the Manor series.

I have not read it all yet, but the adventure looks fun, creepy as all heck and some really awesome takes on my witch class. I love seeing this sort of stuff.   And no worries, if you do not own a copy of The Witch (buy why not!?) you can still use the witches here.

Of course there is more material in this issue than the adventure, but I just got it so it will have to wait for a proper review.

But I can say this.  Go out and get this now!

New Basic Witch Spells

A couple of new spells I have been working on for the witch. Designed to be used with The Witch for Basic Era Games but it can certainly be used by other classes such as the Necromancer or Vivimancer.

All spells and names are considered 100% Open in terms of the Open Gaming Licence.

Blood Augury
Level: Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: Caster
Duration: One Question
This spell is a very limited augury where the caster can ask one question and watch how the blood reacts. If the witch uses her own blood the question must be about herself or someone close to her, if it is the blood of another then it can only be about that person.
The question must very specific; “which door should I take?”, “what is the safest way home?” Given the nature of the blood magic the question is usually related to life, death or mortality. The answer is entirely up to the game master.
Note: If a witch or vivimancer uses the blood of a pregnant woman then the answers will always be vague since it involves two lives. The one exception is if the witch asks the gender of the unborn babe.  This will always produce a correct answer.
Material Components: A pewter plate and a drop of blood.

Feel My Pain
Level: Necromancer 1, Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: 50’
Duration: Instantaneous
The witch transfers pain and damage to another target in line of site.  She invokes the spell and either cuts herself or causes damage in some way, such as putting her hand in a torch fire.  She take 1 hp of damage (regardless of how much would have been dealt) and she turns and magnifies that on her target causing 1d6 points of damage.
Material Components: The material components for this spell are the witch's boline or dagger or what ever she uses to cause herself pain.

Share My Pain
Level: Necromancer 2, Vivimancer 2, Witch 2
Range: 25’
Duration: Instantaneous
With this spell the witch can turn damage caused to herself to another.  The witch can cast this spell after any attack that causes her damage and return the same damage to her attacker. Only the one that attacked and damaged the witch can be effected.
Material Components: The witch must have been damaged for at least 1 hp of damage.

Stay Death's Hand
Level: Necromancer 1, Vivimancer 1, Witch 1
Range: 1 Target touched
Duration: 1 round/level
By casting this spell the caster will cause one target touched to stop loosing hit points if they have reached 0 or less.  For the duration of this spell the recipient will not die from their wounds.  This spell does not prevent the target from taking additional damage, say from fire or additional attacks. Nor does this heal damage.
Material Components: A touch and a soothing word.

Vigor

Level: Cleric 1, Witch 1

Range: 1 Target touched

Duration: 1 round/level

This spell allows the caster to temporary increase the Constitution score, with associated hit points, of a single touched creature.  The witch herself will take a temporary loss of 1 point of Constitution and 1d4 hp.

The increase is 2d4 (2-8) and lasts a number of rounds equal to the witch's level.  Hit points lost will be from these temporary hit points first.  When the spell is complete the witch's Constitution returns to its original value but the hit points are lost till healed.

Material Components: The life essence given up by the witch.

Witch's Cradle

Level: Witch 4

Range: One target in line of sight

Duration: 1 round/level

With this spell the witch can cause one target in visual range to have all their senses completely blocked. They cannot hear, speak, feel, smell or see anything for the duration of the spell. If the witch ends the spell, becomes unconscious or is killed then the spell automatically ends.

The spell is similar, but superior to, the Hold Person spell."

Material Components: A bit of string or cord the witch wraps around the fingers of her off-hand.

Section 15
The Witch: A sourcebook for Basic Edition fantasy games, Copyright 2012 Timothy S. Brannan
Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts, Copyright 2013 +Dyson Logos
The Complete Vivimancer, Copyright 2014 Necrotic Gnome Productions and +Gavin Norman
New Basic Witch Spells, Copyright 2014 Timothy S. Brannan

Yog The Monster from Space

It's 1975.  I am sitting down to a night of hopefully watching a monster movie on KPLR-TV out of St. Louis. Our baby-sitter for me and my younger sister is my older sister Terri and my older brother Pat*.  (It could have been my other older brother Mike.)

Anyway this movie had been advertised all week and I wanted to see it.  I was already watching Dark Shadows at this point and had seen a Godzilla movie.  Saturday came around and I got to watch a little bit of it; till my older sibs turned it off.  I remembered bits and pieces of it for years, but never knew the title.

A couple years back I asked people on Facebook.  All I could really remember was a giant octopus/squid, tentacles that reached out an grabbed people, and it all took place on an island in the South Pacific.  No luck.  I tried searching in back issues of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. No luck. The biggest problem was I didn't remember enough of the movie to give people enough clues to work on.

Well thanks to my friend Dr. Theda at his eponymous Crypt I was able to piece the last bits of it all together.

The movie that has been bugging me for nearly 40 years is "Yog Monster From Space"!

I bought from a less than reputable website which I have to admit I feel a little bad about.

I got it in the mail last night and popped it in to make sure it worked. It did. It is the movie I remembered. The music and the sound effects were the clincher. The DVD looks like a VHS transfer (complete with "tracking" issues!). The cover was run off on someone's ink jet.

But sure enough this was the movie in question.

Yeah. I paid real money for this.

The way I see it I now have piece of mind. I know what the movie was and now I can finish watching it.
I am like Odysseus at the gates of Ithaca. My long search is over.

So of course what do I actually do last night?  Stayed up and watched Pacific Rim again!

Now I need to add more Kaiju to my games.