One Issue Campaign, part 4

Time to continue plundering Dragon #69 to build a campaign from whatever we find inside. Today we're looking at this totally awesome ad for an old Atari computer game. Speaking of Atari personal computers, have you seen this new Atari style USB keyboard? I never owned an Atari PC but that looks sweet as hell.

FACT #1: If your campaign does not already have a haunted cemetery full of draculas, wolfmen and other unsavories then you either need to add one ASAP or come up with a darn good explanation why your world does not include such things.

But why is this graveyard haunted?  Is every cemetery in the campaign world a hang-out spot for the undead?  That's my assumption in the World of Cinder.  Graveyards there are basically segregated housing for the living impaired.  Or is there something particular jacked up about this one bone zone?  Maybe some sort of evil artifact or lingering curse powers the undead-ification and the PCs can do something about all these spooky monsters. 

I remember reading somewhere (an old MERP module or maybe right there in Tolkien) that the whole problem with the Barrow Wights was that the Necromancer was waking them up.  Perhaps an agent of the the Iron Wind (as mentioned in part 2) who was a student of Circe Doombringer (part 1) is running around stirring up the dead as a sort of macabre fifth column.

FACT #2: Starting a game by waking up in a coffin is totally rad.

Seriously, can you think of a better way to deliver an in media res upside the players' heads than "SUDDENLY you awaken in a coffin surrounded by a vast graveyard"?  Forget scoring goldpieces, just get me the crap outta here!

Perhaps all the PCs in the campaign are folks from the Real World who wake up in coffins!  It would be the fantasy equivalent of starting the campaign by getting out of cryofreeze like in The Morrow Project or "An Alternate Beginning Sequence for Metamorphosis Alpha" (Guy W. McLimore, Jr., Dragon #6).  Players could even run D&D-ified versions of themselves in the vein of the D&D cartoon or Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series.  The latter, incidentally, is one of the few fantasy novel franchises of which I was ever able to get through more than one book.  The rape sequence in book 2 or 3 put me off the whole thing, though.

Getting killed by a kobold while playing yourself would be a bummer.  But you'd also get the opportunity to try to figure out what character class best suits you.  Unless like Mark Barrowcliffe, the author of The Elfish Gene, you figured that out when you were a kid.  Mr. Barrowcliffe decided as a lad that he was obviously a druid.  I never went to the Mazes & Monsters-esque level of actually acting out some of these fantasies the way he did, but I was convinced at one point that I would be a kickass wizard if only magic was real.  By the way The Elfish Gene has some pretty neat stuff about the early British D&D scene, if you can get over the fact that the author seems to despise anyone who might be reading this post.

So this post is getting rambly.  To get back on track, let's run with the idea that every PC in the campaign is from Earth Prime (or whatever) and enters play by waking up in a coffin, tomb, open grave, etc.  That establishes a nice little overarching mystery: What the crap is going on?  Were those wacky medieval theologians right about the existence of Purgatory and that realm just happens to look like a cheesy 80's fantasy movie?  Are the jerks behind Riverworld also at work here?  Did all the PCs go into some sort of capsule-less cryofreeze only to wake up in the distant and weird future?  Obviously the whole campaign doesn't have to center around this mystery, but it certainly adds a little flavor.

So next installment of this series we will finally get to the first article in the mag: "Runes".

One Issue Campaign, part 3

Okay, today I'm going to try to get through three whole pages of Dragon #69, panning for campaign gold in the editorial section and letters column.

The editorial on page 2 is one of the many attempts to convince the readers that when Gary Gygax gets ornery in his Dragon articles that he is not expressing the official opinion of the magazine.  Editor Kim Mohan tries as politely as possible to get out from under the shadow of ol' EGG.

Let's use that tension.  We'll turn  Uncle Gary into Ernest the Erudite.  He's a sage by trade in his grey years, but unlike most sages he can attack as an 8th level fighter when pressed.  That's because his former profession was as Captain Ernest of the Legion of Stannus.  Nowadays the outfit is run by the younger, less well proven Mohan of the Hill People.  The core of the Stannic Legion is a couple hundred elite heavy footmen, fighting with a combination of pike and halberd.  They also field a few dozen crossbowmen and have their own armorers and such.  All in all its not a huge unit but they are sufficiently well trained and well equipped that they can turn the tide of battles involving thousands.  Will Circe Doombringer or Danlak o' the Falcon hire the Legion or some other party?  Will the PCs discover the sagely Ernest's connection to the unit and try to use his influence to get the Legion to change sides?

Page 3 includes Kim Mohan's rundown of the contents of the mag.  Since this particular Dragon was the January issue, he starts with a throwaway line about New Year's Resolutions:

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a magic item that would keep us from breaking our New Year’s resolutions? What a different place this world would be. . . . Come to think of it, C. C. Stoll did mention to us that some of the powers of Arrakhar’s Wand have yet to be discovered; maybe that’s one of them...

Arrakhar's Wand is the name of the fantasy boardgame included in the issue, which we will come to in due course. Right now I'm more interested in this idea that maybe in the campaign world there's one day a year, called simply Oath Day perhaps, when all oaths sworn and promises made become magically binding.  Basically it would be like casting geas or quest upon yourself.  You'd need only one or two well-placed Oaths to make the campaign world tricky indeed.  For example, the Elf King can't help the lands of humanity against Circe Doombringer because he made a peace treaty with her on Oath Day many years ago. Maybe the PCs figure out they need to lure one of her orc armies into the Elf Realm so that she's the one who breaks the oath.

Next up is "Out On A Limb", the section of the mag where people write in to tell the editors what they got wrong in previous issues.  Other letters get published, but basically "Out On A Limb" was the the pre-internet place where readers nitpicked the crap out of other folk's work. For example, I got nothing against Scot Fritz of Allentown, Pennsylvania.  But his idea that issue 66's article describing a fictitious Thieves Cant was a waste of time and that we should instead all use Esperanto?  I like Esperanto and I'm not even buying this line.

I think what I'll do is try to take each writer and their individual beefs and make NPCs out of them.

Pa Scoffrit - This grumpy old fisherman living near the docks of the small port of Allen is a secret lynchpin of the international criminal network, thanks largely to his knowledge of the Thieves Cant of a dozen cities. What even most of his criminal contacts don't realize is that he is also a high ranking Assassin.

Monbec the Mysticator - A magic-user of middling level who specializes in phantasmal forces and other illusory magic.  He's working on a book outlining his pet theories on a unified theory of illusions and will gladly buy scrolls and items with an such effects from the PCs.  He has no time for illusionists who use their powers for simple entertainment; illusions are serious business, dammit!

Valpar the Lion - A loudmouth viking type.  He's always looking for new adventure and will readily join the PCs.  Valpar is brave to a fault but no stealth or suprise is possible with him in the party.  Think Brian Blessed in a horned helmet.

Sir Zimmer - This knight of the realm possesses all the knightly virtues but he's a closet racist.  Dude just can't stand elves and won't even admit it to himself.  This won't be immediately obvious but if he joins a party that also includes a member of the pointy ears set he'll eventually figure out a way to get him killed, perhaps by being offended and challenging the elf to duel or maybe just 'accidentally' pushing him into a pit.

Malec the Magnificent - A magic-user who idolizes the ancient master Nystul.  He's trying to collect all of Nystul's spells.  Note that some of Nystul's work was illusionary in nature and Malec and Monbec can't stand each other.  And they both hate it when people get their names mixed up.  They kinda look alike, even.

So there's five dudes who can liven up things a bit.  The name "Out On A Limb" might be worth a little thought as well.  Perhaps at some point the PCs will need to pick a magic fruit from a giant tree and the fruit dangles from a branch jutting far over a cliff.  Flying magic will make that task a snap, so maybe some sort of avian monster lives in the tree.  We'll call the fruit the legendary last Black Apple of the God-Tree Kathrad-Gor and the bird who nests in the tree is named the Dread Eagle Krimmarek.  Maybe a Black Apple is the only thing that can cure someone who has fallen sick because they broke a promise made on Oath Day.  That's why, despite the angry bird monster, there's only one precariously-positioned one left in the world.

At the end of the last page we're looking at today are three tiny ads.  The middle one I've already used.  Stannum is Latin for tin and those guys are clearly the members of the Legion of Stannus up above.  Argonaut Games obvious provides a wealth of references for us to loot for campaign material.  The key question when doing so is whether the campaign is set ages before or after Jason's legendary voyage.  Since part 2 introduced some outer space people to the setting, we'll go with the idea that the whole campaign world is set in the Mythical Future rather than the Mythical Past.  So we can include the Golden Fleece as one of the great magic items of the campaign AND we can have it be haunted by the groaning, miserable spirit of the ancient hero Jason.  If a PC can get this eons-emo ghost out of its self-pitying funk it ought to have a lot of useful advice on how to be a first rate hero.

And then there's the Battle for the Bakery.  The citizens of the village of Paffenroth (not too far from Allen, actually) have all been turned into mindless zombies.  At first it seems like the local baker is to blame, but it's really a superintelligent interstellar yeast that's behind the plot.  Can the party stop the Rising of the Bread God?  Do they dare venture into the fiery oven/temple the zombified townsfolk have constructed for their doughy master?  Will that one trouble-making goof in your game group be dumb enough to eat a slice of the Bread God after the party defeats it?

One Issue Campaign, part 2

Time to crack open that issue of Dragon (number 69) and see what's inside...

...and we've gone off the rails right from the inside cover ad.  Nice.  I remember as a kid being disappointed that the setting in Star Frontiers did not include a kick-ass organization called the Galactic Legions.  Here's an opportunity to remedy that.  Imagine the Galactic Legions as sort of a Star Fleet type good guy org.  What are they doing on our D&D planet?  Could the party befriend some scouts surveying their homeworld?  Could the PC party be composed of crash-landed Legionaires?  Or maybe if like me you still have that cool Star Frontiers city map, part of your campaign world is colonized by a bunch of sci-fi dudes.

I find the domed and towered sci-fi city silhouetted behind the legionaires very evocative, so let's go with that last option.  One of the Legions identified a resource-rich but largely uninhabited region to build a futuristic colony.  That could be what sets Circe Doombringer on a rampage.  She opposes the offworlders but most regular folk like the economic advatages of interstellar trade, so she ends up fighting her own people with armies of skeletons and orcs.  (FYI In Part 1 a commenter by the name of Rick offered some thoughts on a motive for Circe that could work just as well.)

Obviously we'd need stats for at least some laser guns and those cool white spacesuits (I'm thinking protects as platemail, encumbers like leather).  And a Yazirian character class.  And don't forget to sprinkle in some robots and psionics.  Starting, as I suggested yesterday, with Labyrinth Lord as a base makes adding this stuff super-simple.  Most of this sci-fi stuff can be adapted from Mutant Future.

Okay, let's move on.

Page 1 of the magazine is an old Rolemaster ad.  I'm working with screengrabs of the Dragon Archive CD-ROMS (still one of the hobby's best values ever, by the way) so some of the art I'm going to share is all munged up.  Anyway, let's look at four elements of this ad that I found interesting.

This blurb for Claw Law is a little hard to read.  What I'm digging on here is the idea of 'unbalancing results' and 'entangling strikes'.  In my opinion people don't fall down enough in baseline D&D combat.  And getting your weapons tangled up with the foe's weapons or someone's shield sounds interesting as well.  My first thought is to write up a short table of stumbling/falling over/weapon boogered up effects and figure out a way to get it into play.  Maybe "Anytime a natural 13 is rolled, go to the General Fracas Chart.  If your net attack roll is a hit, the Fracas result affects your target.  If it's a miss, you are affected instead."

Obviously there's no setting material in these thoughts, but house rules also help flavor an individual campaign.

The Iron Wind is a very early ICE product and I don't have much more information than that blurb says.  But I do know this: that is a cool mofo name for some badguys.  Maybe that's the name of Circe Doomsinger's organization and the first half of the campaign is a cold war espionage thing against the assassins and traitors of the Iron Wind.

The (iron) Crown of the Ice Empress really ought to be one of the major magic items of the campaign.  Maybe its stolen by agents of the Iron Wind and the PCs have to retrieve before they use it to plunge the Duchy into eternal winter.  By the way I'm sure ICE is named after the iron crown of Morgoth from Tolkien, but there really is an Iron Crown of Lombardy.

Finally, there's this dude.  It's a little hard to see but it's basically a youngish-looking fellow with the same haircut as Rather Dashing.  A hawk is alighting on his arm as a snake looks on from up a tree.  Who is this young hawksman?  Is that snake a lurking danger or another pal like his bird buddy?  I think I'll call him Danlak o' the Falcon.  He's got some sort of beastmaster/druidic thing going, but with a more civilized fairy-tale type gloss to it.  Prince of Birds and Beasts is one of his titles.  The craggy castle in the background (which is almost invisible in this terrible pic) is his home.  Prince Danlak could be a valuable ally for the PCs, what with his ability to know everything the birds in his land know.  But maybe he's a secret member of the Iron Wind.  He's probably got some pet bears that could totally maul the party if they find out and try to take him out with a direct attack.

One Issue Campaign, part 1

Today I'm going to start a new series of blog posts.  This is an experiment of sorts, so maybe it won't work out as well as I think it will.  But I'm going to try anyway.  The basic idea is simple:

1. Start with set of core rules, preferably one a small amount of setting material or a strongly implied setting.  Too much setting info will spoil the soup I think, while none whatsoever will serve as an insufficient basis.  I'll be using Labyrinth Lord (revised edition/fourth release), with its Duchy of Valnwall sample wilderness.
2. Get a single issue of Dragon or some other gaming mag.  Ideally I should have selected one at random, but for sentimental reasons I'm going to use Dragon #69.  It was the first issue I owned. 
 

3. Squeeze every possible of iota of usable information out of that magazine and nothing else to flesh out a campaign for your ruleset.  (FYI I'm not switching campaigns.  This is just a thought experiment.)

Today we're going to start with the cover.  Clearly the main antagonist of the campaign is that sorceress calling up an evil army.  Taking a cue from the character creation example in the '81 Moldvay rules, we'll call her Circe Doombringer.  Statting her up should be a snap.  6 rolls of 3d6 produce Str 11, Int 7, Wis 16, Dex 12, Con 10, Cha 8.  I'd probably swap Int and Wis, since she's obviously a magic-user type.  Her good looks might lead some to think Circe needs a higher Charisma score, but I think I'll leave it at eight and assume she has a terrible personality.  That's why she uses orcs and skeletons in her armies rather than people.  People require social skills to manage, orcs just cower and obey with a little magical bullying.

What level to assign to Circe is mainly a matter of how long you plan for your campaign to run and whether she needs to be a threat for the whole thing.  With skeletons in her army, I think she's probably needs to be at least the minimum level to cast animate dead, which in LL is 9th.  A tower and d6 apprentices of levels 1-3, available at 11th level, would be useful for her master villain status, so let's call her an MU 11.  One of those 3rd level apprentices could make a useful foe for some early adventures in the campaign.

From the picture it looks like Ms. Doombringer owns at least two magic items.  The staff she carries should probably be a Staff of Power or Staff of Wizardry, since she's the main villain of the campaign and all.  We'll call her winged crown the Dragon Crown of [blank], where I'm hoping to fill in the blank with something from later in the magazine.  I don't know yet if that will work or not, as I purposefully did not reread the issue to make this exercise as spontaneous as possible.  What I do know is that one of the powers of the Dragon Crown is to enthrall dragons.  That's why she has a pet dragon on the cover.

Two questions about that dragon.  What the heck color is it?  I think it's actually blue but I keep wanting to call it black.  More importantly, how big is it?  When I got this issue as a kid I assumed it was titanic but way in the background, but the way it's foreclaws are resting on that rock suggests that maybe it is tiny and standing right next to Circe.  Either answer is fine here, but it affects what the PCs think about Circe if they find out she commands Ragramok the Megadragon, the legendary uberbeast that destroyed the city Pha-Zool.  Knowing that she pals around with Ragramok the Runt, least of the litter of the Great Dracomatrona, means something else entirely.  One Ragramok is all fury and destruction, while the other is a master of dragonish guile.

Switching gears entirely, you know what I've always found weird about this picture?  The way the orcs and skeletons are all mixed together, as if they match side-by-side.  That should mean something.  Maybe orcs are natives of the netherworld in your campaign.  And/or skeletons aren't mindless undead robots.  Perhaps they can think and talked because they are cursed souls who can only return to the quietude of death when properly released from their bony prison.  They obey Circe Doombringer not out of magical compulsion, but because she knows the secret magic that can release them from this horrible state.  What if the PCs found out this information?  Would they still be able to kill masses of skeletons, knowing their souls remain trapped inside those shattered, useless bones, perhaps for all eternity?

Finally, look at the lower right corner of the cover.  That's the signature of artist Clyde Caldwell.  If you've been playing D&D or reading fantasy novels for a while, you've probably seem a gazillion pieces by him, mostly involving various degrees of cheesecakery.  Anyway, we can steal his mark, too.  Make it the Rune of Circe.  Perhaps it turns up as the mysterious signature on the bad guy correspondence the party discovers early in the campaign.  Or maybe it's a Glyph of Warding type trap that zaps the PCs with some nasty effect, like maybe level drain.  Stumbling across a few of those before the final confrontation ought to get the players good and mad at the villain.

Next installment I'll actually open the magazine and we'll see what ideas fall out.