blogroll

And I do also like the notion from Karrnath (and from Hollowfaust before that) of using some undead as a natural resource for some manual labor or conscript services. I can find some way to use that in Prezov County and Tarush Noptii both.

Here's a summary of the names I came up with in the earlier posts. Nice to have them all listed out, right?

• Ialomita - small village, location of...
• Hellstone - a former prison site, now abandoned and ruined after a fire. Also: haunted. Of course.
• Mittermarkt - larger city, site of the Academy
• Naggazz - the Dweomer Lich (obviously a variation of Dwimmerlaik) the Great Necromancer. Despite the open nature of undead and necromancy in Prezov County (or Tarush Noptii either one), this guy is still the main Enemy. Dead and locked away.
• The Black Path - The cult of Naggazz, dedicated to his reanimation and reinstatement
• Bitterwood - werewolf infested forest. Similar in tone to Mirkwood from The Hobbit.
• Dragomiresti - site of a former village, now infamous as a massacre site. Abandoned, and... of course... haunted.
• Innsburough - seaside village of Deep One cultists
• Grozavest - capital city
• Seneslau Lechfeld - captured nobleman
• Spire of Neb Ankh - prison of Naggazz; his former lair/capital
• Grigore Stefanescu - head honcho of the Black Path.

7-14-2015 Tarush vs. Naggazz

As I was attempting to modify my CULT OF UNDEATH setting of Prezov County somewhat to allow it and my DARK•HERITAGE nation of Tarush Noptii to overlap and to allow development of one to fit seamlessly into the other (in spite of a few minor differences at the macro level, like what races are available for PCs, etc.) In other words, I want to go back to my old idea of making it a modular campaign element; one that can fit in a more "standard" D&D-style fantasy world, and one that with a name change, can fit into my DARK•HERITAGE setting without issue as well.

One thing that became obvious after I starting noodling over the details, though, was that I had overlap I didn't necessarily want.

After making a big deal out of Naggazz, the Dweomer Lich, which is basically a retooled Whispering Tyrant (since the point was to adapt the Carrion Crown adventure path, which features him as an element quite prominently), it occurred to me that of course I already had a big, buried, slumbering Necromancer figure in Tarush Noptii; Tarush himself. While it's true that they're not exactly the same conceptually, is it really all that different to say that there's a buried, slumbering, imprisoned arch-Necromancer slash lich vs. a buried, slumbering, imprisoned Charnel God of vampirism and undead? Especially in a setting where "gods" are somewhat less like deities of mythology and more like glorified super-antagonists; Kina, The Dominator, etc. from the Black Company books are more like what I imagine "gods" to be; combined with powerful demon princes, fallen angels, and powerful nature spirits--not exactly the same thing as, say, Zeus or Thor. But even if it's not exactly the same thing, it's a little hard to see it as really meaningfully different.

So that kind of nixed my more overt homage to Warhammer and Nagash (although I still love the recent artwork of him, and may find a way to use it, if possible)--the Dweomer Lich is going to be Tarush, the Fallen Charnel God. In both versions of the setting--CULT OF UNDEATH and DARK•HERITAGE. Because why make it different?

A few other names harmonization things: For Tarush Noptii, depending on whether you look at the entry here for the blog, or at the map (which is still private--never digitized and hand-drawn on a poster board, for now, the capital city is either Èrdely or Vèzhok, whereas I came up with the name Grozavest for Prezov. All three are from Hungarian and are deliberately meant to recall the Transylvania region to some degree, and to represent the Tarushan language. I like the most recent the best, in part because it avoids diacritics and is therefore easier to type--honestly, I long ago decided that I didn't really like Èrdely anyway, even though it is the Hungarian name for the region of Transylvania. Especially after the scandal of Sabrina Rubin-Erdely, the totally fake journalist for Rolling Stone came out earlier this year. Let's harmonize to Grozavest, and the name of Vèzhok can still be used for another location within Tarush Noptii as necessary.

Anyway, although I've been very busy, having just come back from vacation, needing to catch up at work, I had some friends blow through town from their expat work assignment, and we visited with them--but I still have as a high priority open item to remap and digitize said map, the Tarush Noptii region, to be followed by the rest of the DARK•HERITAGE setting.

7-21-2015 Cult of Undeath updates

I've made a minor executive decision, and I'm going to rename Prezov County; I'm going to use the word Timischburg, which is a combination of the Romanian and German names for an actual city in Transylvania (Timişoara/Temeschburg). I've decided over time that the name Prezov County just didn't really feel right, and in a game that's supposed to evoke the visceralness of the horror genre, how the name feels is important. Prezov still works as a name for a location somewhere within the country, though. I'll log that one away as a useful name I can still recycle.

In the campaign model, each box would be the equivalent of a "module" whereas here most of them end up being brief shorthand notes for an encounter or series of interlinked encounters at best.

A few other notes. Ideally, there would be a lot of cross pollination between the various boxes, but because I did a rather simple "transcription" of the outlines of the various modules in the adventure path into the matrix, there isn't nearly as much of it as would be ideal. Most of the columns end up being rather discrete "chimneys" that don't interact much with the others, and there is relatively little opportunity to bounce back and forth from one campaign stream (i.e., column) to another. Assuming I'm happy with the CULT OF UNDEATH experience, I might try to do a slightly more radical restructuring of another one of the adventure paths down the line (Legacy of Fire, Serpent's Skull and/or Skull & Shackles stand out as the most likely candidates for me.) But for the time being, each column reads a lot more like a traditional module than like something that can be remixed with other modules to create a more organic feeling campaign.

I'll need to add a few new optional monsters; I realized (somewhat belatedly) that while I have wraiths, I don't have any other kind of ghost or incorporeal monster. Among a few other misses. I honestly don't want a proliferation of ghostly like creatures, but I do want to have an a la carte option of special abilities that can be added or layered on as needed to basically turn the same monster into the equivalent of wraiths, ghosts, spectres, allips, and who knows what other similar standard D&D monsters.

Playing this as an m20 game, I'd figure that a "mega module" is still only a 4-5 levels at the very most, so if I start the game at 1st or 2nd level, I'd only get to 5-6 or so by the end. That means we won't be fighting Orcus at the end, I guess.

To start the campaign off, prior to even embarking on the matrix, keep in mind that the PCs are all going to be called to Ialomita for the funeral of an old friend, a professor. They won't know this yet, but he was murdered by followers of the Black Path, a cult that seeks to resurrect the Charnel God trapped under Grozavest. They're on one of those rather video-gamey quests to assemble a bunch of artifacts, and the professor had at least one of them.

Anyway, the will of the professor gives the PCs some incentive to stay in town for a few weeks to make sure that his heir and daughter lands on her feet, and column #1 happens while they're still in town.

If so, let them do what they like. But keep track of the list of things that are meant to happen. If Revecca is not rescued from von Szell, maybe he does manage to lure a Typhon daemon from the sea, who rampages across the countryside. If they don't put down the ghosts, maybe Mittermarkt becomes so haunted that it is evacuated. Maybe some other group of NPC adventurers show up and start solving problems. Maybe the PCs even fall under suspicion as being involved somehow with all this nastiness.

This isn't meant to be punitive really—although it can seem that way. This is just what happens if the PCs don't do their job and rise to the occasion to save the kingdom.

And that's how you convert Carrion Crown into something that I could run. I've got a setting; adapted from some prior development of mine, it serves reasonably well enough as an ersatz Ustalav—and why wouldn't it; it was developed under very similar design constraints. I've got a system that feels sufficiently D&D-like, while serving my needs as a quick and easy to use swashbuckling system. I've gotten rid of the worst railroad-like elements, I've pruned the AP of all of the (surprisingly, many) instances in which it betrayed the tone that it was meant to evoke. It still feels like a module, but it focuses more on what will happen around the PCs (with the assumption that they'll intervene) rather than a plotline that they must follow. Granted, if the PCs don't bite on the hooks you're dangling, then you've got your work a little bit more cut out for you than if they do, but that's not the purpose of module design to factor into account all of the things that the PCs might do instead. The setting does include a hex map, so they can just ignore all of this and hexcrawl their way over the setting if they'd rather do that.

So, as the final leg of my CULT OF UNDEATH project, I'm going to flesh out the map a bit more, build a real D&D-style hex map (about 20x30 or so) in a very traditional sense, and key it up a bit. That way, I've got all kinds of material available for you to potentially use. Of course, like I said, it's not my intention that the PCs ignore these hooks, and as conditions get worse the more that they do ignore them, they will hopefully be prodded into taking some kind of preventative or mitigating action. If they just don't, though—well, their negligence may indirectly be responsible for "blowing up" the setting. Stefanescu is a fool to think he can control a Primogenitor. I don't have Primogenitor stats, of course, but they'd be really nasty. Not only that, opening up the seal to free one Primogenitor probably leaves an avenue for all of them to escape. Twenty Primogenitors is a disaster on the order of getting hit by a Yellowstone supervolcano style eruption combined with being hit by a Biblical scale flood. It just really sucks for everyone. And to make matters worse; if the Primogenitors are free, why not Melek Taus himself?

While there's some amount of ironic entertainment in thinking that the PCs allowed the Apocalypse to happen, I'm going to assume that such a result would be so statistically unlikely as to be a moot point.

EDIT: Well; I've got two more legs to the project, actually. I want to flesh out that outline above with more of what I need. Stats for antagonists, and whatnot, specifically. Some more detailed location material in the cities and villages through which the game would presumably pass, etc. Random encounter tables. I dunno what else. Anyway, it gives me plenty more CULT OF UNDEATH posts yet to make, I suppose...

8-25-2017 Timischburg Hexmap

So, many months ago—a couple of years ago even by this point—I hand drew a sketchy map of Tarush Noptii, for use with the CULT OF UNDEATH game. At the time, I wasn't even calling it Tarush Noptii necessarily, but I clearly borrowed the geography of that prior creation, added a few new details, and later changed the name and decided that they were, in fact, one and the same (although I do also have the alternate name of Timischburg.) I colorized and labeled the map—again, very quick and dirty and sketchy—and threw a hex grid overlay on it.

But what I always knew that I'd eventually have to do, if I was ever to make a hexcrawl capable map, was to make a honest-to-goodness, old skool D&D hexmap of the place. Which, I have now finally done. This map isn't supposed to be complete-complete—I've deliberately left lots of blankish spaces with only terrain. One is to assume that there are many more villages, hamlets, and other small settlements than are noted (because actually very few are) and even up to reasonably sizable towns can be inserted without too much work or effort in places that are otherwise blank. For instance, most of those cultivated farmlands all along the southeast coast and up near Preszov should be assumed to have small hamlets or even villages in them for the local farmers to gather to market, etc. Most of the hexes through which the rivers run should have similar hamlet and village sized settlements, but only the small town of Ebenbach and the larger town of Mittermarkt are actually noted.

Also; I have put no ruins anywhere on the map, but naturally one can assume that there are some. This is a very old country that's been continuously settled for thousands of years.

Of course, by ruins, I don't necessarily mean D&D-style "dungeons" but that's only because I don't really do dungeons myself. Someone else could certainly assume their presence, if desired. But you've got to decide for yourself where they are, if so. Also; I exported the map, but didn't save it. In this, I made a rather significant mistake; because I forgot to add the coordinates first. (sad face) So, you'll have to use this without coordinates. You'll survive, no doubt. I'll probably have to eventually re-draw it because of this, so look at this map as a "draft" I suppose. Sigh. If I'm going to go to that much trouble, I'll probably double the size of the map and halve the scale, to allow more detail.

So anyway; let me describe the map. If you're not quite familiar with the Hexographer app, then you might not necessarily recognize every one of the terrain tiles, so I'll describe what's what.

In the spirit of not reproducing stuff that Paizo has already produced, let me give you the high level summary of what to do with the first few bullet points, as highlighted above. This summary is from my post a day or two ago about how to prune the adventure path and make my notes focus more on what the NPCs are doing, rather than on what I expect the PCs to do. The PCs are on their own to make their own plans, counter-measures, or what-have-you with regards to the NPCs' plans.

So, I'm actually assuming that you have access to the Carrion Crown adventure path books, although I'll try to see what I can do to make that not strictly necessary in case you don't. I'm going to use Mittermarkt as a relatively major large town. It corresponds to Lepidstadt in the Pathfinder sending, and I'm going to use the same map to represent my version of it. Because; why not. Professor Alpon Lechfeld doesn't live in Mittermarkt per se; he lives in a smaller village down the road, Ebenbach. This will be represented by the map for Ravengro, since it's the analog, anyway. According to my map, they're only one hex apart, and there's a nice smooth road connecting them. This means that it still takes several hours to travel from one to the other; you don't walk or ride almost ten miles in just a few minutes without a car. I know that I personally, on foot on a decent dirt road, could cover that in about three to four hours—about half a day—without unduly hurrying (although I admit I'd rather take a whole day and walk more leisurely.) Needless to say, Professor Lechfeld doesn't commute exactly; he lives a life of semi-retirement and only comes "to town" once a week or so, most of the time. He's prosperous enough to have a carriage, I'm sure, and a few horses.

What could the professor have left the PCs, and under what conditions? I think a silver sword that he uncovered during an archaeological expedition, cleaned up and identified as the sword of famous ghost-hunter champion, Azold von Craultou. Some notes on the archaeology of Eltdown, including an incomplete transcription of the Eltdown Shards would be appropriate. Maybe a few gems of moderate value. However, as in the case of the module, to inherit, they need to stay in the house for a couple of weeks and make sure his daughter Revecca is properly attended to, set up, and ready to succeed. She's young, but not a child. She may well have some suitors—maybe even the PCs are given the task to sort through their merits and help her choose one, etc. Or maybe she's legally and financially independent, assuming she is watched over somewhat. Not sure exactly how this one will work out yet. It may well depend on who I play this with.

As ghosts of dead prisoners start to attack people in the town, maybe turn a little bit less to the characters named in the module, and focus more on recognizable urban legends and other cultural touchstones. Bloody Mary, the Hookman and Bloody Bones for instance. The Headless Horseman, maybe. Maybe even Slenderman. The silver (or maybe even +1 magical, if you're feeling really generous) sword that the PCs inherited from Lechfeld could come in awfully handy here. Recall; here's my stats for ghosts:

GHOST: AC: 16 HD: 4d6 (16 hp) AT: touch +4 (1d6) STR: -4, DEX: +2, MND: +1 S: undead immunities, only hit by magic or silver weapons, arrows do a max 1 HP damage.  Ghosts also have one of the following special attacks.  More powerful versions can be created by giving them two or more:

--drains 1d3 DEX on touch, creatures reduced to -5 DEX are immobile and helpless for coup de grace attack that kills them automatically

--as an action, may cast the spell Withering of the Haunter (level 2 spell)

--forces a Sanity check on all characters that can see the ghost

--under a permanent effect identical to the Blasphemous Piping of Azathoth (level 4 spell)

--can cast all spells up to 3rd level

The spirit of the departed, which for reasons which are unknown, lingers on earth to bring misery and fear to those who remain.  Many, even when defeated, will return after many weeks, months or even years, if their remains are not properly attended to—they usually need to be exhumed, doused in salt, and burned.

These are challenging monsters for 1st level PCs to handle, even in FANTASY HACK or the more constrained (but from a system standpoint, identical) CULT OF UNDEATH system. If you've only got one weapon that can even affect the ghost (likely) then that makes them even more challenging. PCs may have to find some silver that they can use an improvised weapons (silver candlesticks as clubs or maces, melt down coins to form crude knives, etc.) Although the stats above say that ghosts will be defeated for weeks, months or even years, I'd make it much less permanent. "Defeating" a ghost in combat only makes it disappear for that night; it will come back in just another night or two. The PCs have to understand that without infiltrating the ruins of the burned and semi-collapsed prison where these killers died, finding their bones or whatever else is left of their remains, setting them on fire and salting them, they have not permanently defeated them and they will continue to be a threat to the town. Researching how to deal with ghosts, probably from the Professor's literature, should be an element of being successful here; if they PCs think that they can just charge a ghost, shouting "Get her!" they will have a rather bad time.

Eliminate that dungeon-crawl aspect of the prison as presented in the module; but you can certainly (and should) see about adapting the Haunts, or at least a couple of them. Reminder again; the rules for haunts are here. They're too complicated to be an m20 rule element, but you can adapt them easily enough. Keep in mind that there's no "channeling positive energy" in FANTASY HACK, so destroying the haunt is the only way to end it—either that or just suffer its effects and soldier on.

Feel free to also have a rat or bat swarm. The module has a rat swarm, by the way, as well.

So there you have it. This little mini-adventure plus some encounters is the "collapsed" version of the entire first module—a necessary pruning if you want to turn an entire Paizo Adventure Path into something like a module; even a longish module. It will probably take a whole session to resolve; if your players are like mine, it might well take two. The optional events on pages 54-55 of the module can also be worked in as pretty cool little vignettes that help confirm that this is a horror-themed game. The rumors in page 59 in town would also be useful. You can use the key provided in the module with the map I linked to above, but you don't need to. There's lots of opportunities to wander around town, talk to NPCs and get the lay of the land. There's lot of opportunities to explore the surrounding countryside as well, and you should feel free to make that exciting if so; some random encounters, bandits, wild animals, etc. They may need to wander about the countryside exploring reports of hauntings and ghosts, honestly.

Keep in mind that the events of the second module; the next two bullet points (which I'll do in the next post of this series) should actually happen concurrently. The ghosts and the Frankentstein monster are threatening the village of Ebenbach and the larger town of Mittermarkt at the same time. This gives the PCs a chance to move around a bit, too. Explore the area, try and figure out what's going on, etc. It may not be a bad idea to have the ruins fo the prison actually be a mile or two outside of town.

APPENDIX: Ghosts in the haunted house:

SLENDERMAN:  AC: 16 HD: 4d6 (16) AT: touch +4 (1d6) STR: -4, DEX: +2, MND: +1 S: undead immunities, only hit by silver or magical weapons, arrows do a max of 1 HP damage, forces Sanity check on all who see him, drains 1d3 DEX each round on touch attack. Characters with -5 DEX are helpless and immobile, and will be killed by coup de grace.

MOURNING MAIDEN: AC: 16 HD: 4d6 (16) AT: touch +4 (1d6) STR: -4, DEX: +2, MND: +1 S: undead immunities, only hit by silver or magical weapons, arrows do a max of 1 HP damage, casts Glance of the Gorgon as a 5th level caster once per round.

Haunts in the haunted house: Slamming Doors (at the entrance), Bleeding Walls, Choking Hands.

New haunt: THE PIED PIPER (Notice DC 15 to hear the soft sound of piping before the haunt triggers in full.) The mournful dirge of the Pied Piper is mesmerizing to its targets.  Effect: Everyone in the area of effect must make a DC 20 MND + Subterfuge check to avoid being sucked into the trap; those who fail have their DEX drop temporarily to 0—until the piping stops, or the target is dragged from the area.  Also, all characters visibly age and wither within the area (lose 1d4 hp per round) while the piping plays.  The DEX effect can be avoided by plugging your ears with something sufficient to cause the character to not hear, although the withering will still happen as the Pied Piper sucks the life from the characters.  The haunt can be destroyed with holy water; the Pied Piper was terrified of drowning.

8-30-2017 Cult of Undeath with Fantasy Hack

This may seem like an unusual topic, if you know the history of both (although, of course, I don't presume that anyone pays that much attention.) Let me give a very quick and dirty summary of my system development, though.

1. I'd been running around house-ruling d20 Modern and D&D 3.5 to be used with my DARK•HERITAGE setting for years. I'd also played with other systems, but never really settled on anything. Until...
2. In early 2013 I belatedly discovered the Microlite system (amazingly, by then it had already been around for almost 7 years!)
3. In May of 2013, I created my own adaptation of m20 for use with DARK•HERITAGE. I also took the two existing Star Wars iterations of m20, combined them into a single one, and added my own elements. I think this was a great adaptation of the m20 rules to an existing setting that works well with the premise of an old-fashioned game like m20 anyway. Even if it's just me saying so.
4. These systems underwent periodic revision and fixing of minor elements for some time. Most of these changes were minor, but they didn't really completely settle down until 2015, at which point both the Star Wars m20 and DARK•HERITAGE m20 were considered complete.
5. Also in 2015, I was confronted with the possibility of needing to pick up where our group had left off; in a campaign that was faltering. We ended up doing something else (Call of Cthulhu—a campaign that also ended up faltering, as it happens.) I decided to start the CULT OF UNDEATH project; a thorough pruning and adaptation of Paizo's Carrion Crown adventure path. For whatever reason, I decided to adapt m20 to do this. This was the genesis of the m20 CULT OF UNDEATH game; I basically took the DARK•HERITAGE game and replaced the DARK•HERITAGE races with some that more closely resemble standard D&D. I could, of course, simply have used an existing m20 D&D version, including the original 2006 m20, or maybe the Purest Essence. But, for whatever reason, I wanted to do my own thing.
6. In June of 2016, I decided to expand the CULT OF UNDEATH system into a full-blown "My D&D"—i.e., my own take on what I think the D&D system should look like to best emulate my ideal game of it. This became, of course, FANTASY HACK.

So, the question is weird and unusual; because CULT OF UNDEATH is the seed from which FANTASY HACK grew; mostly by adding the appendices, examples of play text, and bulking up the monster list, rather than by changing anything fundamentally. Of course you can run CULT OF UNDEATH with FANTASY HACK when they are the same game. But what I really mean is, are there elements in FANTASY HACK that maybe shouldn't be used in CULT OF UNDEATH?

SANCTUARY. This is an asylum located just upriver from Mittermarkt, and easily visible from the walls. As noted in the module, it's been burned and abandoned in the last several weeks; although it wasn't "the Shambling Man" who is responsible; it was the Beast itself, trying to find Lechfeld. The place has been inhabited by a small pack of ghouls since its destruction, though—three of them. Because of their proximity, they will shortly present a real threat to the town if not dealt with.

The ghouls here come from another small town (which I'll need to add to the map) just a hex or two up the road (and river) from Mittermarkt, at the crossroads of the main road, which continues from Mittermarkt into Vetala County, and a small, poorly maintained and infrequently used narrow path that heads towards Eltdown. This small town is named Frouxerr, and if it needs to be detailed, use the map of Carrion Hill from the adventure of the same name.

Meanwhile, in Ebenbach, while the ghosts are wreaking havoc, this is also causing a great deal of turmoil in the small village, including the expression of strange madness and more. The following take place in The vicinity of Ebenbach.

MONUMENT DESECRATION. The possession of Gibs is more or less as detailed in the first module; although there's no Vesorianna holding the ghosts in; it's the professor's stolen amulet that has allowed them to wander freely. But the possession is a nice touch, with its sleepwalking mischief, up to murder.

NURSERY RHYMES. Children around town have started saying a bizarre nursery rhyme. They profess no knowledge of how they learned it, and may even be confused when they are interrupted and asked about it, as if they didn't even know that they were saying it.

Baby, baby, naughty baby,

Hush, you squalling thing, I say.

Peace this moment, peace, or maybe

The Mourning Maid will pass this way.

Baby, baby, she's a vicious crone,

Heart as black as Mittermarkt's steeple,

And she feasts on those not grown

Every day on naughty people.

Baby, baby, if she hears you

As she passes by the house,

Limb from limb at once she'll tear you,

Just as a cat tears a mouse.

And she'll beat you, beat you, beat you,

And she'll beat you into pap,

And she'll eat you, eat you, eat you,

Every morsel snap, snap, snap.

Of course, the Mourning Maiden is a ghost released by the loss of the amulet. Not unlike The Woman in Black, she targets children in particular as victims.

RAT SWARMS. The Pied Piper haunt manifests during the day too, in a minor fashion. Rat swarms appear suddenly from wells, fields, sewers, or other places, and run wild through the village, frightening everyone before disappearing again into the countryside. This can happen several times a day for a few days, until the Pied Piper haunt is destroyed.

RESTLESS DEAD. It's not just ghosts, of course. If you want to step up the scariness, have a handful of bodies actually crawl out of the graveyard here and there at night. No more than one a night, and not every night, but this can be done up to three times before the villagers are panicked about it.

RESTLESS DEAD: AC: 12 HD: 1d6 (4 hp) AT: hand strike +1 (1d6) STR: -1, DEX: -1, MND: -4, S: undead immunities, only takes half damage from arrows or bullets.

All of this starts less than a week after the death of Alpon Lechfeld, and contributes the rumor that spreads like wildfire that he's a necromancer and rests uneasily in his own grave, tormenting the poor people of Mittermarkt and Ebenbach following his death.

9-01-2017 Brief Commentary on Running Cult of Undeath

OK, let's talk just a bit about the whole notion of running CULT OF UNDEATH since I've finished fleshing out everything that I would ever do prior to running what is a module's worth of adventure. (Even though it's pruned and summarized from two modules worth of adventure as published; and published Paizo modules tend to have more side-quests and extraneous crap in them than I'd ever run myself.)

I've said before that I'm not old school, but I am old-fashioned. What do I mean by this? Mostly that I prefer systems that encourage and enable an old-fashioned, rulings-centric style, but I'm not old school in that I'm not a fan of the game played with those rules the way it was originally played. Most long-time players of D&D came into the hobby from one of three vectors, and have—speaking very broadly—three major playstyles (that don't necessarily correspond to the vector that brought them to the hobby.) You could over-split this into more taxonomical classifications, but I'm deliberately keeping it rather broad. The approach vectors to D&D, up to and including through the big "D&D as fad" period in the early 1980s, are the following:

• Wargamers and other hobbyists. This is the original vector into the hobby, but it was destined by its very nature to remain a niche vector. Gygax and Arneson, of course, were hobby wargamers, and D&D rose out of playing around with solo variations on wargames that they were playing in wargaming hobby stores and whatnot.
• D&D players who may not have been wargamers, or even particularly interested in wargaming as a hobby (although they may have dabbled a bit here and there) but who were fans of fantasy fiction and wanted the game to resemble that as much as possible. I'm one of these kinds; my wargame experience even today is limited to a handful of games played here and there, and looking over stuff because it was somehow related to D&D (in other words, D&D was an abortive vector into wargaming; the exact opposite as above.) In fact, I presume that a very large majority of gamers came in via this vector, and it makes up by far the largest population within gamerdom.
• D&D players who joined because it was faddish. Back when the Puritan-descended totalitarians who have been culturally and socially dominant in America since Lincoln's War went through one of their many episodes of paranoia, hysteria and mob/Crusading, D&D was a target. This predictably made lots of people check it out. Most of them didn't really stay, they played D&D when it was faddish and stopped when it wasn't—but some of them did.

While there is some correlation, I believe, between approach vector and later preferred style, it's not a perfect correlation. Or rather, I think the first two are somewhat correlated to two specific playstyles, the third approach vector isn't correlated to anything, and the third playstyle is one that's just common no matter where you came from, because it's an easier way to run the game, and requires less effort and skill, while still giving a relatively decent result for most gamers.

• Focus on sandboxing. Hexcrawling is very popular with this crowd. Modules that are not hexcrawl-like in nature are not often used. This is what I mean when I say "old school"—there's a high correlation between the approach vector of wargames, the tendency to treat D&D itself more like a game where the characters are more like tactical chess pieces than characters, etc. For whatever reason, this playstyle also tends to attract a lot of really whiny, bitter, resentful caitiffs who are desperate to smugly proclaim their superiority to anyone else who doesn't play the way that they do.
• Focus on module play. This was unfortunately encouraged early on by the publication of tons of modules, of course, but a side-effect of that is that a lot of GMs don't really know how to run more player-driven games very well, and don't know what to do when players deviate from what's written, so they tend to railroad them back on track using ham-handed DMus ex machina. Better GMs can pull this off, and assuming that the players are somewhat forgiving or willing to be a bit on the passive side here and there in the interest of promoting the game, this is probably by far the most common mode. It's not limited to any particular approach vector, I don't think, although the wargamer approach vector seems to be the most likely to hate anything that even hints at this.
• There is a third method, of course, which is probably driven by guys who are fans of fantasy stories, novels, movies, and TV shows, and who use techniques found therein to create a experience who's end result bears a passing similarity to those as well—including an emphasis on character and roleplaying to equal the emphasis on combat and exploration. I doubt many people approach gaming with this style who don't come into the hobby via the second approach vector. This is an approach that can go wrong if not done skillfully, although what usually happens to GMs who try this and fail is that their game simply degenerates into something like the second style above, but with home-made modules. Either that, or it degenerates into sitting around talking sessions where nothing exciting happens. The tea party with Lady Moonblade which takes up multiple sessions is the parody of complete devolution. But that's what you get when the style goes wrong, or when you just have an extreme Girl D&D as Jane Austen Wannabe endpoint on the spectrum. When it goes well, it's going to be more like an exciting action movie with likable characters. Fantasy James Bond, maybe, or fantasy The Three Musketeers, etc. Don't get me started on what the other two styles are like when they go wrong, but trust me; they're at least equally obnoxious and irritating. I'm assuming for the sake of argument that when talking about these different playstyles, we're talking about when it's being run by a skilled and talented GM who understands the strengths and weaknesses of his style and does it well.

If you can't tell, I certainly am part of that third group. There's some good advice out there from folks who are good at running games that way, if you can still find it, that used to be published in Dungeon Magazine as a column. The first to get your hands on is Ray Winninger's run on the Dungeoncraft column, and the second is Chris Perkins' gig as the author of the DM Experience column. Sadly, the archives of both are no longer available on the Wizards of the Coast website, which is a bizarre tragedy. Luckily for me, I grabbed the text of all of those columns while it still was and copied and pasted it into a text doc so I could have them available when I wanted to read them—but I know for a fact that you can find most of the content for both at various other archive sites here and there.

Of course, you may be thinking to yourself, "Hey wait, this CULT OF UNDEATH project you've been describing doesn't really sound like the third method, it sounds more like the second method with a handful of nods to the first method sprinkled through it." That's... actually not an unfair thing to note. CULT OF UNDEATH is specifically me trying to find a way to adapt a module series in a way that would be successful for me, but it's not really my style to use published modules at all in the first place. But assuming I were to want to, how would I make it work for me? CULT OF UNDEATH is supposed to answer that. I'm trying to keep it from becoming the worst kind of railroad, while still maintaining the structure of the modules, more or less. (Well, actually I've changed a lot there too. Paizo is a highly SJW-converged company, and its products reflect that same twisted, delusional world-view, so I've had to make some fairly significant structural changes so that their "horror themed adventure path" doesn't actually resemble the "anti-horror, anti-heroic hot mess" that was published.)

It's my intention that if I ever actually ran CULT OF UNDEATH, it would be in one of two ways. The first is the simplest; it's a shorter, mini-campaign with a planned, bounded finish in sight from the get-go. How fast it moves depends to a great degree on the group. But from my most recent experience with my most recent group, I'd say that the whole campaign could be done in 8-12 sessions. The stuff that I've already done could easily consume four sessions. We have long sessions—often over five hours, but we've also known each other a fairly long time and "waste" a lot of time chatting, messing around, eating, and otherwise not really playing. I'd guess we get anywhere between three and four actual hours of play in an evening.

The more intriguing way to use CULT OF UNDEATH would be to have it be only one of probably about three threads going on simultaneously. This means that I'd need to create something like two other CULT OF UNDEATH equivalents, and drop all kinds of hooks and hints about those other two, interweaving them throughout the CULT OF UNDEATH experience. Normally when I play like this, which is normally how I play, of course, I'm not adapting anything in particular. I rarely have so much material planned out; I just have NPCs with vague goals that I've only fleshed out a few sessions at most of at a time. I also wouldn't be adopting some other material without any reference to the PCs that I have, so I'd stuff going on that the players could really sink their teeth into, because it would relate more directly to their characters. It's a much more fast and loose, invent stuff on the fly approach, that's driven by NPC agendas clashing with PC agendas. By "planning" I really mean that I have some NPCs and they have their goals and plans, and I predict what the PCs are likely to do about it in the immediate term only, and then prepare something accordingly. If my prediction isn't right, that's fine; I can usually use what I prepared in some other way,and if I can't, well, I figure something out.

I prefer not to let one thread dominate for too long before the ignored ones start to press in on the campaign by virtue of their neglect; the NPCs with their agendas are doing things while the PCs are otherwise occupied. Anyway, as I said earlier, the best thing to do to understand how to run this method successfully is to read the columns mentioned above. There were about 25 or so columns by Winninger before he briefly (and abortively) started over with another sample campaign. The second example is not only incomplete, but it also just highlights the same methodology, so it can be skipped entirely without missing anything. Chris Perkins' columns, on the other hand, weren't nearly so carefully organized, and he bounced back and forth from one topic to another. It's all good, but you really just kind of have to read it all. There's at least a hundred columns, I'd guess. But they're all relatively short. About midway through his run, he collected all of them in a single 107 page pdf (but each column has gigantic titles, an illustration, and some white space, so it's not as intimidating as it sounds.) And of course, it's only the first half of his columns. I think the actual articles are still available on the WotC site if you do a search for Iomanda. But you'll need a list of the columns if you want to read them in order.

9-05-2017 Surrounding Timischburg

I was thinking on some stuff I said late last week: the fact that running something like the Carrion Crown adventure path—even if compressed and heavily modified into CULT OF UNDEATH—isn't really my style. This is true; what I'd normally do is use the material (maybe) that I've already developed, factored out at a high level the motives and plans of some villainous NPCs, and then that would be all that I'd have done. I'd probably also do the same thing for other villainous NPCs, except no relation whatsoever to the CULT OF UNDEATH plotline. As with CULT OF UNDEATH, though, it'd focus on the Mittermarkt and Ebenbach area—at least to begin with—before expanding out from there.

So, I'll continue the next few phases of CULT OF UNDEATH, because that's what this blogging project is all about. But I will also talk briefly about what else I would add to an actual campaign that I were to run—assuming that I'd run this as an open-ended, meant to last for a while campaign. One of the things that I'll need to do in order to pull this off is talk at a very high level about what's going on outside of Timischburg itself, since some of the threats will have origins outside, and it's likely that the PCs will eventually travel abroad to deal with them. Right now, I don't know for sure what those other plot hooks are, but it will help me figure them out to figure out who else is in the neighborhood around Timischburg. And since I'm fond of calling Timischburg a bowdlerized Ustalav (which is in itself a bowdlerized Unversal Horror version of Transylvania turned into D&D) with just a touch of Karrnath from EBERRON thrown in as well, it makes sense to use a shorthand of some other source first, and then bowdlerize it from there. (I like that word, by the way.) So, I'll pick another nation from another setting (or from history), place it nearby, and then come up with my own new names. At this early point, I doubt I'll spend much time worrying about how I will differ from the prototype, but I'm sure that all of these nations will end up differing from them as much as Timischburg differs from Ustalav before I'm done: it will have the same themes, but otherwise resemble the prototype very little in terms of details.

Directly to the east, and southeast from Timischburg, following the coastline of the Mezzovian Sea, will be the Terrasan Empire (borrowed from the Mark IV version of DARK•HERITAGE) which is a Mediterranean pseudo-Spanish or Aragonese (to be truly pedantic and precise) fantasy country. I'll also presume that the elves live in forested, autonomous "reservation"-like areas either within or on the borders of Terrasa. Halflings can also have communities here and there.

North of Terassa (and therefore northeastward, mostly, to Timischburg) will be the Empire of Warhammer's The Old World; a very Holy Roman Empire Teutonic fantasy country, and probably the original source of the Timischer aristocracy that rules Timischburg. Directly north of Timischburg will be a kind of northern steppe and forest, mostly populated by either various barbarians (Celtic in style, I'd wager) or small settlements of the Empire moving further west. And to the north of that will be more seas, and ersatz Vikings. A mountain range running north-south from here (t-junctioning with the Knifepoint mountains, following a large gap) will be one that's populated by various strongholds of dwarves as well as goblins and hobgoblins. Needless to say, these two populations are often at war with each other, as well as with the settlers and city-states and tribes of humans who live in the lowlands around them. Some hardy, La Tène style "Gauls" live in the mountains too.

The northern coastline dips southward after this, so the country immediately to the northwest and west of Timischburg will be a "classical" country—i.e., a Graeco-Roman Republic at its height, just prior to its conversion to an Empire under Julius and Augustus Caesar. I'll borrow anything from any era of Greek and Roman, from Bronze Age Achaeans to early Middle-ages late Roman Empire and stir it all together. While this is a relatively good "protagonist" country, there are a lot of very dark cults that eat through the social fabric of this empire like worms; daemonic and Lovecraftian type stuff that's become relatively socially and politically powerful, even though it must remain under the surface, technically. Although I think having something like a smaller version of the Worldwound—at least the same concept as the Worldwould—smack in the middle of this country would be interesting.

South of this ersatz Graeco-Rome would be a savage country of orcs; a combination of the Hold of Belkzen from Golarion (although I haven't read the longer book on that area yet, so I don't know how many details it will retain) combined with some Skorne stuff from Iron Kingdoms. Further southwest of that are the city-states of Baal Hamazi and the homeland of the kemlings. It'll be different than the DARK•HERITAGE Mk. IV in some ways, because I'm sticking it on the coast, but I'm not worrying too much about the details of it yet.

In the middle of the Mezzovian Sea, mostly directly east of Baal Hamazi and directly south of "Belkzen", will be an undead country of pirates and slavers; very similar to Cryx from Iron Kingdoms (although probably less necro-steampunk, since that's too Iron Kingdoms to fit exactly in any other setting.) And then there will be another shoreline to the very southeastern part of the map, south of Terrasa but across the Mezzovian Sea, which will be al Qazmir from DARK•HERITAGE Mk. IV and the home of the jann.

(As an aside, it's curious how much of the old MODULAR DND CAMPAIGN SETTING material ended up being just that; modular stuff that I'm reusing again and again. This whole expansion of the Timischburg setting almost feels like it could be a revision of my old PIRATES OF THE MEZZOVIAN MAIN game that I ran a number of years ago, except now with Timischburg bolted in. Lot of "full circling" going on.)

I whipped up a very quick, sketchy "map" that is just ovals representing these countries; more to show their relative location to each other than anything else.

This list also has the following great side-effect: it pretty much creates a nearby homeland for all of the races you could pick. Most of these nations are human nations, of course, but I've got nearby dwarfs, elfs, halflings, and orcs. Cursed are already present in Timischburg itself.

Of the appendix races, it gives me homelands for the kemlings, goblins and jann; the woses are already also present in Timischburg. Everybody's now on the board, including even hobgoblins (I could probably add them to the appendix, taking them from my EBERRON REMIXED work—or maybe I'll just treat this as a different culture than the Belkzen orcs.)

I've got "Dark Lords" not only in Grozavest itself, to some degree, but up in the Haunted Forest and out on the island of Cryx. "Graeco-Rome" has dark cults, and Baal Hamazi is the remnants of a tiefling empire, basically—so it's got plenty of dark lords too. This gives me lots of obvious and iconic fantasy villains, as well as the opportunity for potentially bitter rivalry between human countries whenever I need it.

9-11-2017 More Thoughts and Commentary on Running Cult of Undeath

Now that I've mostly finished the CULT OF UNDEATH project, it makes perfect sense that I'd continue to undermine and second-guess the wisdom of even doing so in the first place. Let's talk briefly about how I'd really run my ideal campaign in Timischburg and what I'd really do if I wanted to create a game that was open-ended and would potentially last for many months if not even possibly years.

I'd have to make a few assumptions, first.

• 3-5 players is my ideal group size. I'd probably not really enjoy a solo or even duo game, although I could pull it off in a pinch. More than 5 and it starts to get too hairy trying to keep track of everyone in the group. It's just not as much fun for anyone anymore.
• This would be a potentially rather dark game with PCs that may skirt the line, on occasion, between anti-hero and actual villain. At least, I've seemed to capture that vibe (whether because of something I'm doing, or just because of who I've played with) in the past, and I can run with it. In fact, I rather quite enjoy it. That said; dark is relative. No creepy, pervy stuff. But this is definitely a "hard PG-13" game, I think.
• Characters may be a bit shady, and if not, they'll certainly have to dip their hands in some pretty shady business. I said long ago, and I borrowed this verbiage more or less from Privateer Press's Five Fingers book, but it applies equally well to anything I run; there are three themes and most campaign-length games will alternate back and forth between them: crime and skulduggery, political intrigue, and horror.
• As I say in the actual text of FANTASY HACK itself, I make no presumptions of a "balanced party"—in fact, I think assuming that there will be one and penalizing players, either passively or overtly, for not creating one, is a passive aggressive dick move as a GM. Your job is to bring a campaign for the characters you've got. As a corollary, I also make no assumptions that the party works well together. I tend to enjoy the game most when they don't actually; when they're on the verge of screwing each other up royally rather than bringing A-game tactics and playing like a well-oiled machine.

All that said; how would I actually run the game? Well... time for yet another list.

1. Bring something like Chris Perkins' 3/24/2011 column "Point of Origin" for the characters to latch on to, if they so choose. Along with the character ties rule in chargen, this means that I need players to make characters as the first "half" of the first session, but they'll be nicely tied to both the setting and to each other when we're ready to start.
2. I'd have a bit of a minor railroad at the start. In my experience, players rarely are capable of intelligently taking initiative for a session or two until they've managed to get their bearings in the game. Give them something obvious to work with right off the bat. This would be directly related to the early CULT OF UNDEATH events.
3. Create two other plots. I don't mean plot in the sense of novel or screenplay writing; I mean plot in the sense of "major impending problem that will be unable to be ignored. Clues point directly to it, and mitigating actions can be taken, which is where the PCs come in." Or, "NPCs causing big trouble that will collide with the probable course of the PCs." But they provide the solutions; you just provide the problem. For instance: the CULT OF UNDEATH problem is based on the secretive Black Path trying to steal one of old professor Alpon's amulets that can be used, along with human sacrifice (and of course, Alpon's daughter for various reasons is the preferred sacrifice) to open the vault under which Tarush is kept imprisoned under Grozavest. Other ones might be: Jann pirates have grown increasingly bold on the coastal cities, and have razed some completely to the waterline. Far from being a nuisance and mere raiders, they are now migrating to Timischburg, will burn Grozavest itself to the ground, and kill or enslave the inhabitants as they attempt to establish their own nation on the ruins of the one that stands here today. What is prompting them to move en masse from their homelands on the southern shores, anyway? Or, daemonologist heretics from the northwest are gradually loosening the bonds which hold a number of powerful daemons at bay outside of the world as we know it. At first, only small daemons are able to slip through the tiny cracks, creating havoc in the north, but it's gradually going to get worse until a powerful Daemon Prince is able to come, which will bring about apocalyptic levels of devastation and suffering. These are kinda cliche, but that's OK (it ain't broke) so put a twist on them.
4. These other plots will eventually get more development. Clues to what's happening will start to pop up early on, and by the time we're three or four sessions in, the PCs should have all kinds of dangling hooks from which to choose and bite on.
5. In addition to this, create a secret mystery or arc related to each character; something that is separate from the big stories, but which is important to the character. Totally cool to work with the players on this; either because they picked an origin that you suggested, or because you're riffing off of an origin that they themselves created. Start throwing clues of this out there too.
6. Mix, rinse and spin. You don't need a plan beyond this that stretches more than a session or two. As you dangle clues and hints of things related to all of plots out there, the PCs will go whichever way they choose to go, and you are reacting to their actions rather than the other way around. Create stuff that seems logical and predictable based on their actions. Give them some big wins. Give them pyrrhic victories. Have them wallow occasionally in the agony of defeat. Always make sure that stuff gets complicated, though. Even the big wins will tend to have side effects, and even the worst defeat has a silver lining that can be taken advantage of to claw their way back into... something entertaining.

Anyway, that's the way I'd run this if I were actually running. Which maybe I'll try to do. Like I said recently, my old gaming group is too fragmented, too busy, too far apart—I don't think that's viable anymore. But I've got a store not far that I can trawl for new players, and I can maybe come up with other alternatives too. First I just have to make sure that I'm not too busy to do it...

9-28-2017 Cult of Undeath Review

Here's a direct quote from a sidebar from the third Carrion Crown adventure path module, and a great example of why I struggle so much to figure out how to do anything useful with this Paizo material, which is fundamentally unsuited to gaming, quite frankly.

Running on the Rails The sequence of events in this section places this portion of the adventure on a "railroad." You should attempt to keep the PCs "on the rails," but without obviously strong-arming them or manipulating their actions. You can use Duristan, Graydon, and other potential NPC allies to guide and support the PCs’ actions, while still leaving them free to make their own choices regarding their investigations. Should the PCs take some sort of drastic action that threatens to derail the adventure, these wealthy nobles can step in and play the voice of reason. If necessary, they can even offer the PCs a reward or bribe to keep them focused, in the form of money, a minor magic item, or even property or another type of holding (likely worth no more than 3,000 gp), to be presented once the PCs properly finish their business in Ascanor. Regardless of whom the PCs side with, none of the nobles at Ascanor desire to see the lodge destroyed or overrun by an outside agency that would threaten to destroy the sanctity and privacy of their exclusive retreat.

Ridiculous. As much as everyone knows that railroading is bad adventure design and even worse GMing advice, Paizo still writes what they clearly admit is a railroad—and their excuse is that you can mitigate this by merely not being obvious about it!

Even so, what I find much harder to adapt is the repeated insinuation that the monsters are merely misunderstood and the real villains are transparent proxies for white, male, conservative, Christians most of the time.

It's made it very difficult to figure out what to do with a setting and premises that I actually quite like, because Paizo simply cannot stop crapping in their own bed. It's been a fair while now since I've routinely bought very much of what they're selling, and I've found completing this CULT OF UNDEATH project was actually harder than I anticipated because so much of it is simply unusable to a normal, healthy, psychologically functional gamer. This is why it continues to lapse as I get tired of trying to fight the material into being something worthwhile.

But, I committed to doing it, and I'm going to see it through! I'm reviewing modules three and four for what I want to pull out of them, and I'll have them converted into a bullet point outline of the type that I actually would use to run the game. Sometime soon. I am working on it. I promise.

In the meantime, since I'm lagging so far behind where I hoped to be, here's an image or two from Adrian Smith just for the heck of it, a great fantasy artist who got his name doing Warhammer stuff, and who did a lot of great work for Monolith Games' Conan. I'm going to use some of this stuff to represent Nizrekh, an island kingdom in the sea south-southwest of Timischburg that represents a different tone of undeath. While Timischburg has the classic Dracula vibe, set in pseudo-Medieval fantasy—where vampire overlords and tyrants are under the surface of what could otherwise perhaps be mistaken for merely a disquieting normal environment, Nizrekh is much more blatant and overt; it's Warhammer's Nehekhara (host of the now defunct Tomb Kings army; a skeletonized ancient Egypt, basically) combined with the Iron Kingdoms' Cryx—a steampunk undead pirate nation.

THE BARON'S PARANOIA (I'm obviously replacing the Lodgemaster with a minor baron, Stefan Turcitul. But otherwise, he's very similar to as presented in the module.) The baron knows all about the church, but he's made a deal with the werewolves, because he is himself a warlock, and he's searching the church when he can get away from his retainers without arousing suspicion, for clues to help him on his quest for necromantic eternal life—such forbidden tomes are reportedly still lingering in the libraries below the church. Baron Turcitul hasn't found what he's looking for yet, but there's a lot of material to go through. If the PCs start getting too close, he'll get anxious that they'll either 1) steal the secrets themselves, or 2) report him to the inquisition, which will result in his burning at the stake. He starts trying to head them off.

THE GHOST WOLF I'm not 100% sure that I like this concept, but the concept from Monster Hunter: Alpha is more my speed. The ghost wolf isn't the ghost of some poor werewolf schmuck, I'd rather have werewolves being a curse of those who come across the master of the Wild Hunt, which occasionally touches down in the Bitterwood from back when it was Murkwood, the primal forest that covered all of Timischburg in prehistoric times. He has the spirit of the wolf, a primordial avatar of the Master, who created the first werewolves during the Stone Age. But this is backstory—I'm not sure that I want to involve the Wild Hunt already at this stage, or primordial, Ice Age wolf spirits that corrupt humans unfortunate enough to cross them. I'll probably ax this part, but I'm not 100% sure that that's what I want to do. I reserve the right to keep this in my back pocket for... something.

THRUSHMOOR This is completely unnecessary in my version of the module, except for one thing that might be desirable. It's a reasonably largish town that the PCs have to pass through, where they can get all kinds of rumors about Innsborough, foreshadowing how weird and disturbing it's going to be. If you re-read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth" you'll see that Lovecraft himself uses a similar structure for the same reason; in fact, the protagonist of that story wasn't even going to go to Innsmouth, and hadn't even heard of it before, until he started getting these rumors.

AMBUSH To keep Thrushmoor from being too talky and boring, they suggest that a cultist ambushes the PCs at the livery as they're asking about clues about the "Dark Riders"—a undeath cult assassin with a few ghouls hiding in a hay-wain that's lost a wheel. When they ask the PCs for help, they wait until they're in an uncomfortable, flat-footed position and burst out of the hay. Well, as Raymond Chandler said (paraphrased), when in doubt, have some thugs with a gun show up. Barring guns, some undead thugs sound workable.

SHIPWRECK AND MORE TALKING On the way from Thrushmoor to Illmarsh, the PCs see a ship struggling at some lonely and abandoned quay. The guy on it is a curious inventor type who's come up with submersibles, but for now the PCs are merely meant to meet him so that they can conveniently go to him and recruit him to help them dive later. Since I have little interest in exploring the Deep Ones' lair underwater, I see no reason to include this.

THE MAYOR AND MORE TALKING The Mayor of Illmarsh recruits the PCs (by force, if need be, it says. Seriously) to help him investigate missing people, but what he really wants to do is take control of the Church, and be even more powerful and influential in town, without a major rival. I don't have a mayor, I've got an isolated and disquieting manorial country gentleman, Otto von Szell. Also, since there's no war between Deep Ones and mi-go in my version of this, there probably aren't missing townspeople. Rather, much as in the Lovecraft original, the PCs are prime suspects to become the next missing people to have passed through town. And then, in what sounds suspiciously like a joke, the mayor suggests that the Watcher in the Water (sorry, Tolkien, excuse me, Watcher in the Bay) is just a myth, and then as soon as the PCs wander near the docks they get attacked by one, which is a semi-mundane giant octopus, lacking all of the suspense and terror of the attack on the Fellowship by the Watcher in the Water by Tolkien; although a good GM could make something of it, I suppose.

THE CHURCH Churches in Timischburg are Christian churches, but here, it's a church to some sea or nature god or other of the Paizo pantheon. Of course, in either (as in the Lovecraft prototype) it's not-so secretly a church to Dagon. Paizo calls it the Recondite Order of the Indomitable Sea, because I guess after everything else, they couldn't just use the Esoteric Order of Dagon. This is probably one of those scenes that you want to include somehow, but going into the church and starting to just kill cultists as soon as you walk in seems a little... I dunno, way too caricaturishly D&D, maybe. Presuming that you find the secret doors at the rear of the church, you also end up finding 1) some of the missing townspeople's bodies, with their heads exploded, and 2) "the scion of the sea" a weird lobstery monster (some kind of extra-special modified chuul, to be exact.) And then, 3) the "slug spawn" who look kind of like the ear worms from The Wrath of Khan but who actually cause their victims heads to explode after a few days, kind of like the chestburster from Alien turned up to 11, I guess. There's this whole thing where the slug spawns protect you from mi-go mental manipulation, but the sad side effect, of course, is that your head will explode.

I actually kind of like the head exploding idea, but I don't think this is the place for me to use it. I'll save it for something else, probably. Anyway, after getting this far, the PCs probably suspect the Deep Ones infiltration of town life (especially if they've read "The Shadow Over Innsmouth") but don't know what to make of the slug spawn, and don't know anything about the mi-go thing.

BARON'S HOUSE I actually have a current, present manorial gentleman who's the de facto authority in town, but in the Paizo version, this baronial authority has been MIA (KIA, I should say) for decades, and his manor is abandoned. Lacking anything else to do or anywhere else to explore, eventually they're supposed to make their way there where they discover the full details of the Deep Ones nonsense, as well as figuring out that something is seriously wrong with deal between the townsfolk and the Deep Ones, and that there's some greater threat going on under the water still. There's a ton of encounters here in what is essentially a Lovecraftian dungeon, but few of them, in my opinion, have adequate explanation for why they would exist other than as a guided tour of Arkham Country, with Lovecraftian monsters as attractions in an amusement park. I could potentially use... some of these, I guess, but nowhere near most of them, because they make little to no sense. Anyway, here's a (more or less) complete list of stuff you find here.

• Poor victims of the Deep Ones breeding program, who are now also victims of something else (see below)
• A swampy giant of some kind (not sure why? Bodyguard of the vizier, or something?)
• lots of cultists
• the cult leader, who's head explodes and he turns into a pseudo-Dark Young of Shug-Niggurath on being defeated in combat (not kidding)
• spectres, who are the ghosts of some old tax collectors killed by the insular townsfolk years ago.
• yellow mold (ok, that's not necessarily Lovecraftian)
• hounds of Tindalos, who are lurking around waiting to ambush the PCs in some room for some reason.
• a shantak (yeah, flying around near the balcony hoping someone will walk out so he can attack them. Sometimes I hate D&D, at least as it's poorly played and conceived.)
• a moldy plant thing—a variant shambling mound is what they use for stats, but it somehow manages to feel very Lovecraftian in a pseudo-original way, actually.
• plenty of Deep Ones (they call them scum in Pathfinder, based on the D&D monster of the same name. It's kind of absurd that there are several riffs of the Deep Ones in D&D—sahuagin, scum, locathah, kuo-toa, etc. Anyway, scum is what we get here. FANTASY HACK goes straight to the source and just has Deep Ones. They're public domain, anyway.
• A colour out of space, complete with a well of sorts for it to hang out in.

SUBMARINE DESCENT I don't envision that my PCs will ever take a submersible down to the Deep Ones lair (or even ever conceive of something like a submersible, for that matter) Besides, Deep Ones don't live in "lairs", they live in cities like many-columned Y'ha-nthlei. In any case, this is chock-full of superfluous encounters as well, most of which I wouldn't even use even if I were to do anything with this segment, which I won't.

• a "devilfish" attack (a kind of mini-kraken)
• plenty of Deep Ones (ok, these aren't superfluous, at least)
• dimensional shamblers
• some kind of weird "fungus oracle"—it's just a big fungus mouth with tentacles and short stubby legs. I guess the Paizo folks decided that a Zuggtmoy vibe was really Lovecraftian—which certainly isn't untrue, but I'm not sure specifically why they're supposed to be associated with the Deep Ones or the mi-go either one, except for "the fungi from Yuggoth" which I don't think is meant to be taken too literally.
• mi-go, by the way. You'll fight a few.
• a gug (yeah, I dunno. The flimsy excuse is that the mi-go are doing all kinds of weird experiments in here)
• loads of brain cylinders
• and finally, it ends with a fight against a Dark Young. Then, while they're on their way back to the surface, the mi-go laboratory that covers the Deep Ones lair collapses.
• as an aside, they propose that the Deep Ones will eventually return and things will return to normal before too long. Assuming that the PCs don't massacre everyone in town for being a vile cultist, of course.

10-24-2017 Deconstructing Ashes At Dawn

My summary for CULT OF UNDEATH has the PCs presumably attempting to rescue Revecca and stop the unsealing of a Primogenitor vampire at Grozavest, because the unleashing of such a monster would be catastrophic. Plus, presumably they like Revecca enough to not let her get killed. This is really more like the last chapter of the adventure path as written, and I don't have anything in my summary that follows very well what the fifth chapter, Ashes At Dawn has. In fact, I really don't like this one even more than I don't like the other chapters of this adventure path. Much of this can be seen quite clearly in the Introduction to the adventure, written by dysfunctional r-strategist and professional SJW F. Wesley Schneider. Let me quote parts of it, briefly:

We’d been talking vaguely about Carrion Crown since PaizoCon 2010, when someone on the messageboards eventually hit us with what seemed to me to be a very obvious question: “Why would I help the vampires?” I understand this sort of question when all the details about a campaign’s plot are unreleased, abbreviated, or still forming. But as we weren’t ready or even able to release a lot of details yet, my only answer was essentially, “They have something the PCs want, putting characters into a ‘You scratch our backs and we’ll scratch yours’ situation.” 

For a certain subset of those in the discussion, this was not an acceptable answer.

“But vampires are evil!” “My party won’t work for the undead!” “I’m a paladin!” Wah, wah, wah! 

The world’s a hard place, and even harder when there’re fireballs and zombies! Toughen up! 

I wrote and deleted responses running the gamut of diplomatic shades, but I never posted anything with quite that tone. Most frustratingly, after considering and discussing the concern for a few days, I was forced to admit there was some validity to it. So I told folks we had top men on the job—I was planning to write it myself, after all—and assured them that, come volume #47, they’d be pleased with the outcome. 

Well, you’re holding the outcome in your hands. 

You don’t have to dig deep through Paizo’s backlist to catch the drift of my tastes. In short, I also always rooted for Skeletor over He-Man and the Joker over Batman. So obviously, like many GMs, I like the bad guys, I like overwhelming odds, and I like shades of gray and seeing the heroes forced beyond their comfort zones.

So... if you don't want self-righteous, ham-handed preaching during your gaming about nihilistic values where there's no such thing as a hero, or good and evil, then Schneider doesn't have time for you and only his reluctant professional duty keeps him from openly mocking you—although he'll still throw in some passive-aggressive BS anyway, like pretending that you're crying. What a douche. This is the guy who wrote the absurd fantasy Burning Man bohemian city of Kaer Maga, by the way. Not surprising that the whole "save the monsters, because actually people are the real monsters, especially if they look kinda white and Christian and male, LOL" vibe is one that he's pushed heavily into the adventure path, and which has effectively ruined it. That said, as I've done in the past with the other modules, I've kind of reworked the framework, i.e. "plot" and then go through each module to strip-mine them of any encounters and details of value that can be rehung on this new framework. So, let's get to it. I suspect that I may end up using less of this module than of most of the rest I've reviewed, but we'll see after I go through it in detail at the end of this post if that presumption ends up being true or not.

The gist of the adventure is that someone has started infiltrating the younger generation of vampires at Caliphas, the capital of Ustalav (so my Grozavest, in the TIMISCHBURG setting). These younger punks are spurred into violent revolution, and begin by starting to murder their elders who stand in the way of their own political ambitions, but of course, these younger vampires are being manipulated by the Whispering Way cult, so they're chumps. The PCs are expected to help the vampire elders, who at least make the trains run on time in Caliphas... I'm sorry, they at least recognize that parasites can't literally destroy the entirety of their host, so they oppose the Whispering Way which wants to turn the entire world into an undead one. Given the rules for vampires and their spawn in D&D and Pathfinder, there's an elixir or some-such developed to give spawn free agency, made by hags, and they have their own agenda too. The PCs are supposed to work with the leader of the vampires to solve the mystery of who's murdering the vampires and stopping them so that he will help them track down the Whispering Way and stop their funny business. Again; I don't know how much of this I'll use, but the key elements can be used somehow other than they were originally written, if needs be, so let's have a look at them.

THE HEADLESS HORSEMAN A Whispering Way adherent that the PCs have been following for some time has been turned into a Headless horseman, and is tasked with slowing or stopping the PCs. They fight him on the road, where he's been tracking them, before they arrive in town. He's got dire ghoul wolves with him, and rides on a nightmare.

HEADLESS HORSEMAN: AC: 16 HD: 4d6 (16 hp) AT: touch +4 (1d6) STR: -4, DEX: +2, MND: +1 S: undead immunities, only hit by magic or silver weapons, arrows do a max 1 HP damage.  Ghosts also have one of the following special attacks.  Also: drains 1d3 DEX on touch, creatures reduced to -5 DEX are immobile and helpless for coup de grace attack that kills them automatically, forces a Sanity check on all characters that can see the horseman. 

MOUNT: AC: 15 HD: 5d6 (20 hp) AT: bite +5 (1d6) STR: +3, DEX: -1, MND: -3, S: breathe fire (1d10 HP damage—DEX + Athletics check DC 14 will halve damage.) 

GHOUL-HOUNDS: AC: 13 HD: 2d6 (8 hp) AT:  bite +2 (1d6) STR: +2, DEX: +0, MND: -1, S: touch paralyzes for 1d4 rounds, humans wounded by ghoul-houndss are cursed if they fail a MND + level check (DC 12) and will slowly turn into ghouls themselves.  This process involves taking 1 point of MND damage every day (which does not heal overnight) until they reach -5, at which point the conversion is complete.  GM may provide antidote/remedy to counter this curse.

The ghoul-hounds should arrive as reinforcements after the combat has already started, which for best results, should be an ambush at night on a covered bridge. (Keep in mind that I'm treating the headless horseman as a ghost story, which is more in keeping with the whole Sleepy Hollow tradition. Irish folklore has the dullahan, which is a headless horseman of sorts too that carries around its own head. This is an Unseelie Fae, not a ghost. I don't know that it really matters, but I like the Sleepy Hollow ghost tradition better. Plus, I'm not at all Irish, and in fact have a fair bit of Scots-Irish blood, so screw you, Paddy!)

VAMPIRE BODY INVESTIGATION Vampire bodies and gossip in the morning as the PCs wake up in their inn. If you're not going to do anything with the vampire murder subplot (I am not) then this probably has no place in adventure. Besides, it's not an "encounter"—it's where the PCs get a clue shoved in their face.

A NIGHT AT THE OPERA How typically Vampire: the Masquerade-ish. After going to a fancy party, the PCs are supposed to convince someone to let them browse the archives for clues. In a pinch, they can break in later if they have no charisma or charm. They find clues and probably set off a trap which summons four bone devils. I wonder; I don't have anything quite like bone devils in the FANTASY HACK monster section, but they can easily be replaced with something else. On the other hand; what would I have the CULT OF UNDEATH PC's researching exactly? I don't really need them for anything.

Then a dhampyr NPC shows up and tells the PCs where to go next. Sigh. He offers to introduce them into vampire society so they can rub shoulders with the bloodsuckers and find more clues about who's killing them.