Thursday, August 6, 2020
#RPGaDAY 2020: Day 6 Forest
Wednesday, May 5, 2021
Everything Old is New Again: The Original Known World
The original Known World by Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick.
The Known World Replica Map by James Mishler |
So while back there was some new discussion about the Orginal Known World from Tom Moldvay and Lawrence Schick, the one that was the precursor to the World of Mystara of later BECMI use. James Mishler, who also knows a thing or two about Mystara, put together a hex map of this world and I just can't stop reading it. Such tantalizing treasures here. Demi-orcs? So many Orc clans! A city called Keraptis? Tharks! So many familiar names all in different places.
I know I talked about this one before but it still fascinates me. The map covers an area about 2,400 miles east to west and 850 miles north to south. OR, about the same size as the continental United States (2,800 miles from furthest points east and west, 1,500 north to south).
While I enjoy all of this it was largely academic interest. I mean after all I have plenty of worlds. Come Endless Darkness takes place in Oerth/World of Greyhawk, the Second Campaign is primarily a Mystara one, and Into the Nentir Vale is a solid Toril/Forgotten Realms campaign. So my players are used to the idea of multiple universes and worlds. The characters of War of the Witch Queens are now beginning to learn about this. So adding a new world only makes things difficult for me and really, it's not all that difficult.
Since "War of the Witch Queens" is my ode to both Basic-era D&D (currently using B/X as the rules base) AND to the many wonderful products in the Old-School scene I always felt I needed an old school world to fit the bill. I had thought about using the BECMI "Urt" which gives me the same Mystara maps but make it a little different. Mystara we would later find out is hollow. Urt is a living planet akin to Mogo. I do have a living planet I use in my Sci-fi games, Gaia, so I don't necessarily need another one. Though Gaia is living in the sense there is a planetary wide consciousness as opposed to a living being.
While Urt, or even Urth, is fine, it isn't really what I want. I want something old, or at least has a proper pedigree? Why? Because this campaign is not really about what I can make up. I have dozens of worlds, places, maps, you name it, but I want something different than what I can do.
It was while reading a series of posts (links below) from Jonathan Becker on B/X Blackrazor that gave me an idea.
Why not use this Moldvay/Schick Known World as the PC's world in War of the Witch Queens?
Sure. I should really use Mystara or Mystoerth for a proper B/X feel, but yet this map calls to me. It begs me to explore it. It isn't the whole world, of course, it is just the known world. Sure it's not my world. But I also had no say in being born in Illinois and as a longing for a magical place called Chicago. BTW Chicago did in fact live up to (and down to) my dreams of it.
I get some familiar names, remixed in new ways. I already established my East Haven and West Haven towns and how East Haven in my "world" is in the same spot as Haven on Krynn. West Haven of course is West Haven in every world; it is a Nexus Point.
There is a lot going on this map and it really works for me. It comes from a time period I really want my Witch Queens campaign to be all about. Plus it makes Glantri (and Darokin) into a Welsh-like kingdom (and BEGS me to make the ruler King Llywelyn the Great). Gorllewin even means "West" in Welsh. This really appeals to me. Glantrin as a Welsh city instead of a faux-Italian one? Yeah! That sounds fun. I get to use Glantri again, but this is a very different one that the Glantri of Mystara run by xenophobic mage-Princes.
Then there are all these other details in a map that is just 200 by 200 miles. Deep Ones living nearby? Hell yeah! Again I could spend hours on this map. I mean what the hell is Nanq-Rubbob?? I must know! Looks like some sort of Russian/Slavic Empire to the northeast. Fallen Thyatis to the west. Welsh halflings? Sounds like hobbits to me! Malpheggi Clans? Sounds like swamp hags live here next to the Deep Ones. There are those demi-orcs again. What are they? I don't know but I can't wait to find out!
And really that is it isn't it? What is out there? I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!
Links
- Moldvay & Schick’s Known World, Atlas of Mystara
- The "Known World" D&D Setting: A Secret History, Black Gate
- Let’s Map Mystara Together, The Piazza
- The Original Known World, Adventures in Gaming v2
- Dragonsfoot Discussion
- JB's posts on B/X Blackrazor:
- Adventures by Lawrence Schick
- Adventures and Books by Tom Moldvay
Monday, July 6, 2020
Monstrous Mondays: Ethyl Critchlow, Urban Hag
Tuesday, August 8, 2017
Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge: A Storm of Witchcraft
A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience by Emerson W. Baker
This book has been sitting on my must read shelf since the year began. I have read the history of Salem and the Witch trails many times over the years and I still learn something new. This book is filled to brim with new information.
Many books like to focus on victims, and some even focus on "the afflicted"; those that accused their neighbors of witchcraft. Professor Baker though goes much farther than that and talks about the judges, the people in power and in particular the two Mathers, Cotton and Increase, the learned ministers at the center of this storm.
The term "A Perfect Storm" gets thrown around a lot, but here it is appropriate. There was so much going on here that made the witch craze happen here when it was dying out everywhere else. It really was the last gasp of a dying movement of the Old World in the New World.
It was the start of the end of Pre-American Puritanism.
In this book Salem and 1692 take on a level of cultural impact that the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 did in the United Kingdom.
The book is long, 400+ pages, and full of names. But those names belonged to people and those people left others behind. So Prof. Baker also delves into the impact these witch trials had on the new experiment that would become America.
This is easily one of those books you can read, do a little more research or reading on the subject elsewhere, and then come back to and learn something new still.
If I have one complaint, and that is way too strong of a word, it is that the last chapter was not long enough. I would have loved to have learned more about the cultural impact of 1692 on modern culture and how it shaped America. But that would be a complete other book.
Prof. Baker gives us not only a well researched and well-detailed book, he gives us a book that is easy to read and relate to. There was so much going on back in 1692 that we can relate to today.
The history of Salem is the history of America. The witch trials of 1692 are also part of America; our darker past that some (like the town of Danvers to a degree) would like to forget.
I also listened to the audio book. After listening to interviews with Prof. Baker I kinda wish he had narrated it himself.
You can find Prof. Emerson W. Baker on the web at his faculty page: http://w3.salemstate.edu/~ebaker/ and on Twitter: https://twitter.com/emersonwbaker
You can also read what he says about last year's "The Witch".
He also did an interview at Ben Franklin's World.
2017 Witch & Witchcraft Reading Challenge
Books Read so far: 17
Level: Crone
Witches in this book: None or dozens.
Are they Good Witches or Bad Witches: 25 innocent people lost their lives in the errors of 1692.
Best RPG to Emulate it: This is the sort of setting one can easily use in Colonial Gothic. In fact, I would call this book must reading for any CG player.
Use in WotWQ: Salem Villiage, or at least the popular notions of it, is the model I am basing the town of West Haven on. The relationship between Salem Villiage and Salem Town will be used as a basis for West Haven and East Haven. Though where Salem Town embraces their past today (and Salem Villiage is now Danvers, MA), it is West Haven that embraces their past.
Friday, January 6, 2023
Character Creation Challenge: Ethyl Critchlow for NIGHT SHIFT
Running a bit late on this one. Today I am going to show how to use NIGHT SHIFT with one of my often-forgotten witches, the Hedge Witch for Hero's Journey RPG, First Edition.
The Hero's Journey is a great RPG from James M. Spahn. Designed to capture the feel of a bygone time when people would go on adventures for the sake of adventure. The rules are close enough to Swords & Wizardry to be, oh, 95%-97% compatible. In truth, it is my favorite presentation of the Swords & Wizardry rules.
The class I designed for it is the Hedge Witch. Someone that dabbles in magic but was not a full-on wizard.
The Hedge Witch
These are lower-powered witches and are thus perfect for dabblers or supernatural species that also gain other abilities.
The Hedge Witch has the following powers.
Level 1: Supernatural Awareness. This acts as a Detect Evil spell, and the Hedge can determine if someone is a supernatural creature in disguise or not.
Level 4: Craft Potions. The stock and trade of the Hedge witch are her potions. Guidelines are the same as in the Witch for the Hero's Journey book. Essentially she can replicate any spell she knows.
Level 7: Evil Eye. She can cast the Evil Eye spell once per day at any target.
Level 10: Curse. The hedge witch can curse one target per day.
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I did Ethyl Critchlow a while back as an Urban Hag, but I always wanted to give her some levels in witch.
Ethyl Critchlow
9th Level Hedge Witch / Urban Hag
Strength: 17 (+2)
Dexterity: 17 (+2)
Constitution: 18 (+3) s
Intelligence: 16 (+2) P
Wisdom: 16 (+2) S
Charisma: 8 (-1)
HP: 78
Alignment: Dark / Chaos
AC: 2
Attack: +1
Fate Points: 1d10
Check Bonus (P/S/T): +5/+3/+1
Melee bonus: +2 Ranged bonus: +2
Saves: +3 against spells and magical effects
Witch Abilities
Arcana, Supernatural Senses, Spells, Arcane Powers
Arcane (Occult) Powers
Supernatural Awareness, Craft potions, Evil Eye
Skills
Knowledge (supernatural), Knowledge (occultism), survival
Background
400 year-old hag
Spells
First Level(4): Bad Luck, Far Sight, Glamour, Minor Curse
Second Level(3): ESP, Evil Eye, Night's Companion
Third Level(3): Clairvoyance, Mind Shield, Scry
Fourth Level(2): Discern Lies, Remove Curse
Fifth Level(1): Primal Scream
Note Ethyl uses Intelligence as her prime for spell casting.
Every child, whether human or witch-born, knows to stay away from the house on the corner of Taylor and Bell. Here sits an old run-down house that everyone thought would either fall in on itself or the city would have condemned.
But it is not the house that frightens the children, though it is frightening. Nor is it the small angry dog everyone remembers from their childhoods, making it at least 25 years old or older. Rumor in the neighborhood is that once the dog got out and bit the fingers off of a boy who could not run fast enough.
It is not the dog or the house. It is the owner of both that keeps people away.
Ethyl Critchlow looks like a stereotypical old witch, but this is just a glamour, her true form is that of an ancient and hideous old hag. She is an Urban Hag and has been living in West Haven for nearly as long as there has been a West Haven. She hates all children and takes glee in terrorizing them, but a pact made with the City Council keeps her from doing any actual harm to them. Though if their toys land in her yard she will keep them and if any child climbs her fence to get these toys then she will send her "dog" (in actuality a glamoured Hell Hound) Maximillian after them.
Ethyl would also admit that at her age (almost 400), eating children, especially modern ones, gives her terrible heartburn. Though she did eat a couple of missionaries from East Haven back in the 1960s, but no one came looking for them.
She stays in West Haven because she has nowhere else to go. The city tolerates her and is just waiting for her to finally die of old age or a magical mishap. She is also a great source of magical knowledge and history. She can be bribed with 18-year-old single malt scotch. Ethyl is a heavy drinker, so bring more than one bottle if you plan to use this for information. Also, fair warning, as Ethyl drinks, her glamour begins to fade. Her glamour will be gone when she has worked through two bottles.
Urban Hags are hoarders. Her home is a falling apart pit of junk she has collected over her nearly four centuries of life. Amongst the filth, garbage, and debris of decades, there are also some magical treasures. In particular, Ethyl has several magical scrolls with spells that can be used by any witch or scholar. There is also a magical pipe that can lure the undead to sleep. Though one is advised not to go looking for such treasures.
You can get NIGHT SHIFT in print and pdf. You can get my the Witch for Hero's Journey RPG here.
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Want to see more of the #CharacterCreationChallenge? Stop by Tardis Captain's Blog and the #CharacterCreationChallenge on Twitter for more!
Friday, April 19, 2024
#AtoZChallenge2024: Q is for Queens
I have an inordinate amount of Queens in my games. I am going to talk about two groups in particular, the Vampire Queens and the Witch Queens.
Tea with the Witch Queens by Brian Brinlee |
Both groups are near and dear to my heart and make up a lot of my game worlds' backgrounds.
The Vampire Queens
The vampire queens have a special connection to my early days of gaming. They are:
- There is the (unnamed) Vampire Queen of "Palace of the Vampire Queen," one of the earliest published D&D adventures.
- Lady Neeblack of "The Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen."
- Queen Xaltana of The Lost Caverns of Acheron.
- Darlessa, the vampire Queen who killed my first character and antagonist of my #Dungeon23 adventure.
- Human witch stats
- Vampire stats (Labyrinth Lord)
- Vampire stats (Old-school Essentials)
- Vampire stats (Wasted Lands)
- As a Ravenloft Darklord
I have been using vampire queens in my adventures for as long as I can remember. I recall reading lurid tales of Erzsébet Báthory and watching movies like "Daughters of Darkness" and "Countess Dracula." I had worked on a very early vampire queen, who was going to be called "Miriam" thanks to "The Hunger" for my Ravenloft games (see tomorrow), but I kept coming up with so many ideas. Miriam is still out there, even if many of her aspects are now part of Darlessa. The non-vampire parts of Miriam survived as my Witch Queen Miriam.
In truth I kind of use them all interchangeably, with some emphasis on Darlessa. As they have all evolved in my games, I am slowly sifting out which traits belong to which queen.
Interestingly enough, both Darlessa and Xaltana are also both Witch Queens. Xaltana combines Iggwilv (a witch queen) and Drelzna her vampire daughter.
The Witch Queens
While the Vampire Queens are here to challenge the characters as adversaries, the Witch Queens play a much different and far more wide-reaching role.
This began as an idea of me finding and then stating up every witch ever mentioned in the pages of a D&D or related game. The premise here was that every 13 years the witches of these worlds would meet in one place to discuss what they are up to in their worlds and plan to generally stay out of each other's way. The gathering, known as the Tredecim, became a big part of my games. At the Tredecim, the 13 ruling witches then choose a new High Witch Queen to serve over the next 13 years. In my campaign, War of the Witch Queens, the then-current High Witch Queen is murdered before a new one can be chosen. This sends the witches into war against each other, but due to their pacts with Baba Yaga, they can't outright fight each other. So, all their worlds get dragged into the conflict. This includes the characters.
The characters learn first that a once-in-a-century storm has destroyed their home, and they are refugees helping move their fellow town folk to a new home in East Haven. While their first obvious goal is to stop all the weird happenings going on in their own world, they discover these events are playing out across the worlds. To stop it, they need to stop the all-powerful Witch Queens, but to do that, they will need to discover who murdered the High Queen, how, and why.
Since I started working on this and developing it more and more, I have gone over 13 Witch Queens and my planned 13 Adventures. I am using Basic B/X D&D as my rules of choice here, which limits the levels characters can achieve to 14.
I am running it with my family now, but I'd also like to run it for a dedicated group someday. I think for that I would take all the adventures I am using for it and edit them all a bit.
If I keep the levels 1-14 then the obvious choice is D&D Basic B/X. If I expand it all to level 20 then my choice will be Castles & Crusades.
Either way, I have a lot to look forward to!
Tomorrow is R Day, and I am going with the campaign setting I ran for all of the AD&D 2nd Edition era, Ravenloft.
OH? Like the art of my Witch Queens up there? The artist is Brian Brinlee and he has a Kickstarter of his new art book going on now! Check it out.
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
War of the Witch Queens: Tanglewood Keep
I am on vacation this week! So I started my day with a COVID-19 shot (Moderna version) and came home and ran some Basic D&D/OSE for my family. We continued the War of the Witch Queens game today. The characters entered Tanglewood Forest and stopped the Ogre attack.
My players loved Twil Topknot! He was a huge hit with everyone especially the halfling who decided they must "cousins."
Twill with "Kitty" |
So a quick recap. The characters are refugees from a village called Solace in my world but it was destroyed in a "natural" disaster (spoiler, it wasn't natural). They were leading a group of other refugees to the City of East Haven. Along the way, they have dealt with the ghosts of evil clerics, ancient witches, and more. Today they have been asked to deal with an Ogre. They defeated the ogre, but became snared in a Mirror of Worlds and have now been transported to Krynn.
Here they met Twil Topknot and Sarana (formerly Stevie) from the adventure, DL15 Mists of Krynn. I am also pulling in information from DL1 Dragons of Despair.
I am just getting to the part of the adventure that didn't originally work for me; the characters needed to get the crystal to get home. But the question comes up, why can't Sarana or Twill just go get it. Well, sadly Twill can't sneak and sneak out as easily as he once did. Sarana, well, the towers of High Sorcerery have their eyes on her, so she is trying to lay low.
Oh. Of course, the clerics in the group no longer have their magic. That is going to be fun. Except for the Cleric of the Moon. Yeah, he now has three voices in his head and he has too much magic. That is going to be interesting.
It has been fun dropping all sorts of little Krynnisms. I just got done re-reading the first Dragonlance trilogy so this has been really great. This is really the first time I have ever run a game in Krynn. It has been great so far.
Hoping to get another one in during vacation.
Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Review: Shadowtide: A Blue Rose Novel
The trouble with most "gamer fiction" is you can practically hear the dice being rolled in the background. Sometimes, and it doesn't matter how compelling the story, you can't bu help see or hear game terms being thrown about.
Thankfully that is NOT the issue here with Shadowtide: A Blue Rose Novel by Joseph D. Carriker, Jr.
Carriker gives us a story we can get into and characters we can care about, that is the job of all good storytellers; whether that medium is a novel, a play or a role-playing game. In this case, we get a good novel that preserves what we like or want from the RPG but still satisfies as a novel.
The story opens with the disappearance (likely murder) of two envoys from the Sovereign's Finest. The Sovereign is Queen Jaelin of Aldis and her envoys are tasked with helping out where they can and mostly fighting the forces of evil. The two envoys are tracking down a reported case of Shadow Sorcerery in the Veran Marsh east of Aldis. Shadow is more than just black magic, it is a taint of the unworldly, of the unnatural. Contrasts are turned up in Aldis, the evil are very evil and the good...well the good try to be very good, but as this book reminds us even the Envoys of the Queen, the very symbols of good, have to make hard choices.
The story begins with a trio of envoys. I would say "unlikely" but in truth the envoys are a varied lot. We have Soot who is a Rhy-Crow, or an intelligent crow with the abilities of an Adept. Morjin Brightstar, a lovable rogue and rake who works best alone, but is constantly falling love with whomever he meets. A note. Morjin is a character who in a lesser hand would have been VERY annoying. But Carriker invests a lot of attention and dare I say love into Morjin that you feel for the guy. He is a former Roamer, a nomadic culture similar to the Romany of our world, but he has been exiled from his clan. So it becomes easy to see how his happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care nature hides a profound sadness of what would be a good heart. Finally the last of our trio is Ydah (pronounced EE0dah). She is a Night person, or what might pass for a half-orc in other books. She is the fighter to Morjin's lover. She is also recovering from recent grief and hides her sadness behind a gruff exterior and a desire to beat the living crap out of people. Which she excels at.
The trio finds themselves in a hidden smuggler's town called Serpent's Haven. Where basically everyone is a criminal or descended from a criminal of some sort. Their mission here is to discover what happened to other envoys and figure out what the nature of the Shadow they were looking for.
I don't want to spoil the plot, but suffice to say it involves cults, crazed cultists, a Dark Fiend and the ever-present danger of Shadow to all that are around it, friend and foe alike.
Naturally, comparisons will be made to the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey, of which Blue Rose is inspired by, but those comparisons are mainly superficial here. Sure one can tell a "Valdemar" story with Blue Rose. One could also tell this story with Blue Rose. The differences to me lie at the heart of what Shadowtide and Blue Rose are really about. The characters of both the novel and game try to do Good with a capital G. But often the only choices they have are goods with a little g. They can't fix every problem. The difference I think then between a Blue Rose character and say a D&D character is that it is the good they can't do is what bothers the Blue Rose characters, and this makes them want to do and be better next time.
That is certainly true for our trio of heroes here. Morjin feels bad about how treats certain people when he knows he has worked towards the greater good. Ydah feels bad about having to kill (and kill she does) cultists, but she needs to stop an even greater evil. Soot, well Soot has some problems all his own and shows us how dangerous the cult they are dealing with is.
In the end, the characters care about their actions. They care about how others see them as envoys and they care about how others are treated. They know there is injustice in the world, even Ydah mentions the stares she still gets in "enlightened Aldis", but they are working to make things a little bit better. Because they care they are not the "murder hobos" of other games or stories and we care more for them as well.
The book ends, but room for a sequel is left open. I certainly hope so. The characters are entertaining and the mystery they are delving into is a fascinating one. Kudos to Carriker for giving us characters whose motivations I believe and whose stories are compelling enough to make me want more.
You can get this book in a lot of places.