Doom of the Jaredites, session 2

First, a message from Barry Blatt:

Brief report from expedition 2 - look out for the giant parrots dive bombing camp at night though. There is a road out to the west, follow it south and there's a temple thingy, just play it cool and you'll be fine. Natives are stone age reptilians who speak 'Snakish', friendly enough.

Here's the updated map:

Okay, that's not really an airplane.  It's the site of a crashed Jaredite Air Chariot.  Important difference.

In the first session the party consisted of newly minted characters made specifically for the campaign.  The party this week was a trio of FLAILSNAILS veterans:  Harold the Adequate (F3, Adam Thornton), Noggin Three-Teeth (dwarf F4/T5, Barry Blatt) and Corkin Gaul II (Bard2, Zzarchov Kowolski).  Harold and Noggin showed up with sufficient coins from previous adventures, so they rolled on the local henchmen chart.   Noggin ended up with a Hopeless Loser he called Colin, which is almost certainly not his real name given the setting.  Harold rolled a Pack Ape, which he named Moar Lut.  Later when he got back from his little jaunt in the wilderness he got it a shampoo and a poodle doo, possibly with ribbons in its fur.  Adam Thornton is messed up in all the right ways, I tell ya.

The survival of Colin the Hopeless Loser is pretty close to miraclous.  He's sporting some large wounds from where a giant bird grabbed him with its talon and some broken ribs from the fall he suffered when he was 'saved'.  Between grunts of pain he also mentions some sort of sword-wielding snake-woman with hypno-eyes, somewhere near "the magic cube".

Doom of the Jaredites, session #1

Here's the roster of the first expedition from the Furthest House of Ahaziel:

Moab the Malefactor - a rather dodgy dwarf and organizer of the party
Anak the Nephilim - a diabolic-looking elf
Nehi the Orange - a magic-user escaping persecution among the Nephites, where sorcery is illegal
Goliath the Lesser - a warrior with the proportional strength of his namesake, too bad he's only 5 feet tall

Hearing rumors of a ruined city along the shores of an inland sea to the north somewhere near a waterfall, the party set off in that direction from the Furthest House.  They returned four days later, delighted and rather surprised to be alive.  The wizard Nehi sports a strange double-line scar on the palm of his left hand, but other than that they seem intact.  They spent most of their time hacking their way through tall prairie grasses, but they did find the shores of a large body of fresh water.  You ever try hacking through prairie grass with a dwarf and a shrimpy fighter?  Half the party is invisible for much of the day.

Here's the updated map:

The northernmost "ruined city" icon is actually a small village of maybe iron age technology that has been partially burned down and completely abandoned, unless you count the numerous spiders as inhabitants.  This place does not seem to be the city of the rumors, as it is only a village and no waterfall was found nearby.

The tree two hexes south of that is a rather large, old walnut tree.  Not particularly exciting but there's a small stream of refreshing water nearby and it's on high enough ground to make a good landmark.  The crossed sabres icon is what the party presumes to be an old battlefield, as it's full of bones.  They didn't get too close to that.

The tower is an ancient structure constructed out of megalithic blocks joined without benefit of mortar.  In it the party encountered lethal vines, some sort of undead wielding a magic dagger and a big scary snake.  The latter did its level best to bite Moab right in his little dwarfy face.  And the party nearly encountered some sort of gigantic bird of prey that alighted (alit?) upon the top of the tower.  Later they found a full grown bull elk up there, picked clean of much of its meat.

Treasures brought back included 2 jaguar pelts and three jaguar skulls (earned the hard way, the third pelt was left behind because they hacked up that jaguar badly before it died), an enormous rack of antlers, five red and green feathers each 3' long, a crude copper bracelet with pale greenish-blue stones and a rather nice non-magical longsword with a silver-chased hilt done up with a fairly tasteful skull motif where the cross-guard meets the blade.  If anyone wants the later it's available for 200sp (that's 200gp if you come from a game with a gold standard).

All in all, I thought it was a pretty good start to the campaign.  Nobody struck it rich, but four first level characters got through four days of unforgiving wilderness trekking.  That's pretty impressive.  I'm still getting the hang of the differences between the Lamentations of the Flame Princess rules and BX D&D, but hopefully I'll get better at that.

updated henchmen/hireling rules - now with apes!

Each attempt at recruitment costs d6 x 100sp (as suggested in Holmes) but this covers both the costs of the recruitment process and the cost of hiring the NPCs rolled below.  If you come up short on cash (e.g. you roll a 5 and only have 423sp) subtract one from your d6 roll below for each 100sp or fraction thereof you are short.

d6 Roll    Result of Recruitment
1 or less  Hopeless Loser: no advancement, no particular skills
2             Pack Ape (Ac14, 3HD, generally only fights when cornered, carries stuff as a dwarf)
3             Specialist: roll 1d6, 1) cook/brewer 2) pack animal handler & packing expert 3) equipment maintenance & repair expert 4) herbalist/hedge doctor 5) horse tender 6) generally competent dogsbody
4            Likely Lad/Lass: 0 level, but at the end of every session survived roll 1d6, on a 1 they join a class
5             d6 mercenaries (0 level fighters, 50/50 chance either Lamanite light skirmishers or stoneage cannibal halflings)
6             1st level adventurer: roll 1d6, 1-2) Fighter 3) MU 4) Specialist 5) Cleric 6) Dwarf

Unless otherwise indicated, these characters will be 0 level fighters, as per LotFP.  D6 hit points each.

In general the PC will need to supply appropriate equipment, though mercenaries and adventurers have a 2 in 6 chance of possessing some basic gear, a hedge doctor will usually start with a supply of herbs and bandages, a cook will have an apron and ridiculous hat, etc.

Recruited first level adventurers will generally expect a half share of the treasure while mercenaries will expect cash bonuses when rendering extraordinary service, such as fighting horrible inhuman monsters.

Okay, let's talk about the new entries on the chart.  Pack Apes in the Doom of the Jaredites campaign aren't actually primates like they are in HackMaster, rather they are the cureloms of legend, helpbeasts that the Jaredites found and tamed or brought with them from the Old World, where presumably they subsequently went extinct.  The fact that Lord Ahaziel's clan still uses Pack Apes is one of the few pieces of good evidence that he is descended from the last Jaredite king.  Here's what one looks like:

Hunched over like that, a Pack Ape looks shorter humans straight in the eye.  Pack Apes are fairly placid, friendly beasts and as long are you are in a location with plenty of vegetation they will feed themselves by grazing on tall grasses or leaves.

The Lamanites are the people that eventually splinter into the Native American peoples, at least in one common interpretation of Mormon pre-Columbian history.  They are technologically less sophisticated than the Nephites and Mulekites (from which two bloodlines default PCs originate) and in this particular period they have a touch of the Noble Savage attached to them.  That way it'll be a tragedy when the PCs lead these people to their deaths.  Maybe they look like this:

Or maybe not.

What happened to the last expedition?

Any party ending a session of Doom of the Jaredites in the wilderness must roll on the chart below.  Note that sessions will general end after 2 hours of play.

Lost in the Wilds of Jared (d6)

1. Entire party doomed.  DM may place their corpses and treasure anywhere he deems fit.
2. Lone survivor returns bloody, naked and quite mad.  Every party member rolls d20, highest makes it out alive.
3. Party gets more lost than you thought possible: all members must play in at least one session of some other FLAILSNAILS game before they can return to play at the Furthest House.
4. Party emerges from the wilderness exhausted and in rags, each character carrying only one item of their choice.
5. Party saved by some sort of friendly local creature(s), whose lair is now placed on map.  The lair now serves an additional homebase for purpose of these rules.
6. Return to the Furthest House(home base), no hassles.

The Big Purple D30 rule may be used with this chart is a party member has not expended their d30 yet.

The Furthest House, domain of Lord Ahaziel and home base for the adventurers.

(Totally not Rivendell.)

Doom of the Jaredites

That Mormons & Morlocks idea has been rattling around my skull, so I think I'm going to try running it via G+ Hangout next week or so.  I'll keep everyone posted on the dates.  The system will be Lamentations of the Flame Princess, but it'll be a FLAILSNAILS joint so bring whatever weirdos you want.

The campaign starts at the Furthest House of Zarahemla, the westernmost extent of the kingdom of the Mulekites.  At this point in the history of continent the Mulekites have largely been absorbed culturally and politically by the Nephites.  A Nephite king sits on the throne of Zarahemla and most Mulekites speak Nephite as their primary language.  Only on the outskirts of the realm can you find cultural hold-outs and the occasional pretender to the throne.

Ahaziel of the Furthest House is one of these throwbacks to the old order.  His family is a cadet line that traces its descent from Mulek, the son of King Zedekiah that travelled to the new world and founded the kingdom.  If you wandered the length and breadth of Zarahemla you could probably find a dozen lords with similar claims upon the throne.  What sets Ahaziel apart from the others is that he also claims to be descended from Coriantumr, last king of the Jaredites.  According to the widely-known legend King Coriantumr survived the destruction of his realm and lived his last days among the Mulekites.  Ahaziel says that this exiled king then married into his family and thus he can claim the Jaredite kingdom as his own.

This is where you lot come in.  Ahaziel needs explorers and surveyors.  He needs to know if any descendants of Coriantumr's subjects survive in the wastes beyond his estates.  And if you can recover any royal treasures, such as the Crown of Coriantumr, so much the better.  Lord Ahaziel hosts a motley crew of adventurers, providing food, drink and a place to sleep for all who would dare to venture into those blank hexes and bring back reports and maps of what is found.

More info to follow.

campaign concept: Mormons & Morlocks

Howdy folks!  The semester is over so time to get back to bloggering about games.  Here's a campaign concept I've been kicking around.  It sort of follows the Wessex line of thinking in adapting someone else's non-wizardy setting for D&D play.  Instead of borrowing from Thomas Hardy, this campaign would lean on the Book of Mormon, the third testament of the Latter Day Saints.  It's a pretty intriguing text.

According to the Book of Mormon America was settled by four different groups, each descended from people mentioned in the Old Testament.  The first group, the Jaredites, rode across the ocean in vessels kinda like Noah's Ark way back when the Tower of Babel was under construction.  They avoided the confounding of languages and thus spoke the original language of Adam and Eve.  Because they exit the Middle East prior to Abraham and Moses and the Babylonian Captivity, their culture would have very few points of contact with ancient Judaism.  By the traditional Mormon chronology the Jaredites arrive in the New World around 3,000 BC.  For two and half millennia or so they are the only human on the continent and they eventually flourish into a kingdom of 2 millions, somewhere in the north.

Near the time of the fall of the Kingdom of Judah and the Babylonian Captivity, which can be fairly certainly dated to 587 BC or so, the other three groups arrive.  The Nephites and Lamanites, both descended from a prophet, settle fair to the south.  The Mulekites, consisting of the last prince of Judah and his followers, settle much closer to the land of the Jaredites.  By the time the Mulekites, Nephites and Lamanites arrive Jaredite civilization has gone down the crapper.  The Mulekites encounter the sole survivor, the last king to rule over the Jaredites.  His kingdom is in ruins.

The campaign would be set three hundred years after that point, when the Mulekites and the other two groups discover each others' existence.  Local PCs would consist of members of any of the three extant tribes of humanity, as well as the three standard demi-human races.  Halflings would be of the homo floresiensis variety, though whether natives or fellow travellers with one or more of the human races I don't know.  I'm thinking elves might be the descendants of Cain and/or Lilith, who live as a secret enclave within the ranks of humanity.  Dwarves would be descendants of the dudes that helped the Supreme Being create the world.

The adventurers would be based in a remote frontier town on the edge of Zarahemla, the kingdom of the Mulekites.  Sessions would consist of expeditions into the desolated realm of the Jaredites, in search of their lost cities.  Since the Jaredites had 2,500 years to themselves they could have developed all sorts of whacky super-science, so in addition to your standard gold and jewels their ruined cities could contain all sorts of death rays and hover cars and robots just ripe for the plundering.  Obviously there would also be degenerate subhuman remnants of the Jaredites, Cthulhoid entities and giant freakin' snakes.