Giants in the Dying Earth

Once upon a time there was a great gaming magazine called The Dragon, published by a long defunct game company called TSR.  Although its main focus was D&D, in its heyday The Dragon was the definitivee magazine for the entire RPG hobby. Man, those were the days.  During this long-gone golden age there was a regular feature in the mag called "Giants in the Earth".  The title is a Biblical reference, in Genesis chapter 6 these mysterious giants in the earth father a race of half-humans, "the same became mighty men who were of old, men of renown". The articles, which ran from about the mid-twenties to issue fifty-something, as I recall, did not deal with literal giants. Rather they statted up legendary figures from the popular fantasy novels of the era. Nowadays you couldn't get away with that in a legitimate journal, what with our society's growing obsession with intellectual property.  But those were different, weird times.

Anyway, today I wanted to share with you selections from a couple installments in the GitE series, particularly the two instances where Jack Vance's characters are written up in D&D terms.  Since Vancian magic is and pretty much always been a hot button topic in D&D fandom, I find it interesting how some actual Vance characters, and, more importantly, their magical abilities, end up translated into D&D terms.

That's a friggin' Napoleonics
game featured on the cover.
Truly, 'tis a lost era.

First up is Cugel the Clever, star of the third book in the Dying Earth series, Cugel's Saga.  He also appears in Eyes of the Overworld, I believe.  I've never read that one.  Cugel's uncredited (probably by Lawrence Schick and/or Tom Moldvay) write-up in The Dragon #26 (June '79) pegs him as a Thief level 14 with 18 Intelligence and Dexterity.  I believe this article might be the first installment and it really sets the high-power standards for the series.  Also in the article is a version of Karl Edward Wagner's Kane, done as a Fighter 30/Magic-User 20/Assassin 14 with 2 eighteens, a seventeen and a nineteen in his stats.  Anyway, dig this neato passage:

Cugel once had access to the notebooks of lucounu, the Laughing Magician, and managed with great effort to memorize three spells. These are: Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell (treat as a hold person), Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth (by which the caster can be neither seen, heard, nor smelled) and Thasdrubel’s Laganetic Transfer (or The Agency of Far Despatch, which places a hold person on the target until a demon comes and carries him away to some specified far land). Unfortunately, Cugel doesn’t always get the spells right and there is a 50% chance that any spell he uses will backfire and cause the opposite of the intended effect. Every time he blows the Laganetic Transfer he himself gets carried away somewhere else, which is probably how he came to the D&D universe in the first place.

Dig those neato spell names.  Cugel's peek at Iocounu's spellbooks is one of the origins of the thiefly Read Scrolls ability, along with similar shenanigans from the Grey Mouser, if I recall correctly.  The other thing to note here is that not only are the spell descriptions super-brief, they have no level assigned to them.  For an oddball NPC thief that may or may not even have these spells in memory when encountered, this isn't exactly a big deal.  But I always look at articles like this for things to steal for my campaign, so as a kid this lack of detail annoyed me.

Issue #29 follows up with stats for Iucounu the Laughing Magician himself.  This wee git is represented by Lawrence Schick and Tom Moldvay as an MU 20 with an Int 18.  More importantly, despite his level he will only know five spells when encountered, rolled up from the following kickass chart:

1-2: The Charm of Forlorn Encystment: this is the same in all respects as the 9th level magic-user’s spell imprisonment.  

3: The Charm of Untiring Nourishment: by speaking this charm, the magic-user need not breathe, eat or drink while the spell lasts. Duration: 1 turn/level. Casting time: 2 segments.  

4-5: The Excellent Prismatic Spray: This is the same as the illusionist’s 7th level spell in all respects save casting time, which is only 3 segments.  

6: Felojun’s Second Hypnotic Spell: a paralysis spell. Range: 1”/ level. Duration: 1 round/level. Area of effect: 4” diameter sphere. Casting time: 1 segment. Saving throw: neg.  

7: Gilgad’s Instantaneous Galvanic Thrust or the Instantaneous  Electric Effort: this is the same as a lightning bolt in all respects save  casting time, which is only 1 segment.  

8: Houlart’s Blue Extractive: this spell is used to remove a being from its refuge or concealment. If the target fails to save, it will simply fly from its hiding place and land at the feet of the caster. Any being so treated will be stunned for 2-12 rounds. Range: 1”/level. Casting time: 5 rounds. Saving throw: neg.  

9: Houlart’s Visceral Pang: the recipient of this spell will be totally incapacitated by excruciating pains in the abdomen for 1-3 rounds. Range: 9”. Area of effect: 1 creature. Casting time: 2 segments. Saving throw: none.  

10: Lugwiler’s Dismal Itch: the recipient of this spell is cursed with a continual itching over every square inch of his or her epidermis. When in this condition, armor class is two levels worse, all fighting is done at -5, and spell use is impossible. Range: 6”. Duration: until dispelled (remove curse will also work.) Area of effect: 1 creature. Casting time: 3 segments. Saving throw: neg.  

11: Phandaal’s Critique of the Chill: this is the same as the cone of cold spell in all respects save casting time, which is only 3 segments.  

12: Phandaal’s Gyrator: the unfortunate target of this spell is levitated into the air and spun about at any speed the caster desires. At the fastest possible rate of spin, the spinner will take 10 hit points of damage per round due to the centrifugal forces involved. Controlling the spell requires great concentration on the part of the caster. If the concentration is broken, the spell dissipates. Range: 6”. Duration: 1 round/level.  Area of effect: 1 creature. Casting time: 5 segments. Saving throw: none.  

13-14: Phandaal’s Mantle of Stealth: the caster of this spell is rendered invisible, inaudible and odorless; virtually indetectable save to true seeing, a robe of eyes or a gem of seeing (and touch). Any attempts at offensive action on the part of the recipient instantly negate the spell (as with invisibility). Duration: 1 round/level. Area of effect: creature touched. Casting time: 2 segments.  

15: Rhialto’s Green Turmoil: the recipient of this spell is overcome with a violent nausea which totally incapacitates him or her for 2-20 rounds. Range: 5”. Area of effect: 1 creature. Casting time: 2 segments. Saving throw: neg.  

16: Spell of the Macroid Toe: in this specialized polymorph spell, the big toe (or similar extremity) of the creature affected grows to the size of a small house. Range: 4”. Duration: until dispelled. Casting time: 4 segments. Saving throw: neg.  

17: Spell of the Omnipotent Sphere: this combines the effects of the magic-user’s spell anti-magic shell with those of a cube of force. It is a near-total (but non-mobile) protection for the caster. Duration: 1 round/level. Area of effect: 10’ diameter sphere. Casting time: 9 segments.  

18: Spell of the Slow Hour: this spell is similar to the magic-user’s spell, slow, except that it is twice as efficient, and slows the affected creatures to one-quarter the normal or current rate. In all other respects (range, duration, etc.) it is the same.  

19: Temporal Stasis: this spell duplicates the 9th level magic-users’ spell time stop in all respects save name.  

20: Thasdrubel’s Laganetic Transfer or the Agency of Far Despatch: when this spell is uttered, the recipient is bound as if by a hold person spell. A nycadaemon appears (i.e., is gated in), grasps the held recipient and flies him or her either to a point designated by the caster or 10-100 miles in a random direction. Range: 3”. Area of effect: 1 creature. Casting time: 1 round. Saving throw: none. 

This part of the article was obviously written by Law Schick, as that guy is the only person I ever heard of who ever really cared about segments of action.  Well, maybe Len Lakofka liked 'em, too.

Some, off the top of my head uses for the chart:

• Spells for Encounter Critical, which eschew levels already.
• Third level spells for a Holmes-only campaign.
• Spells that appear on ancient scrolls that pre-date spells being divided up into levels.
• Random crap bad guy wizards can throw at the party, the same sort of jerks who use the coolest random chart ever written.

Any other ideas?

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.

This wizard makes no sense.

I can't find my note indicating who sent me this pic, but thanks!

(Please feel free to take a bow in the comments section.)

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.)

Why low level, high lethality?

So my little piece on Tuesday about 5e was more widely read and talked about than most of my blog posts.  Some folks took great exception to my suggestion that 1st level characters in the current draft of D&D Next were too tough.  In some of the less regulated corners of the gaming forums it reached the level of name-calling.  If you were to go by certain commenters on therpgsite.com and grognards.txt, I'm some sort of tiny-dicked sadist of a DM who takes out his virginal sexual frustration on his players.  This is all fine and good, as calling people names has a long, proud tradition on the internet.  It's a freedom we all enjoy.  For example: those guys are all douchebags.

However, those douchebags did make it clear that I should have made some sort of attempt to articulate why I like running games for incompetent, fragile PCs.  There are two main reasons:

1) I'm a lazy bastard of a DM.  Prepping an adventure is super-easy when the characters are low HP, low resource buffoons.  Three orcs with indigestion is a perfectly feasible encounter.  Enemy spellcasters only have a handful of spells you need to think about.  You don't need to use monsters with a lot of special abilities.  I don't think I'm the only DM who wants to do the minimal amount of prep needed and not a helluva lot more, and a low-level game helps that a lot.

2) Players love getting away with murder.  Not necessarily literal murder (but that totally works), I mean that one of the greatest feelings you can get out an RPG is that you just did something naughty and got away scott free.  The less competent and more likely your PC is to die, the greater the celebration when you make it out of the dungeon alive.  Sure, you can achieve this feeling at any level with a properly lethal array of opposition, but nothing testifies to your ability to cheat death than escaping ANY adventure alive when your max hit points is lower than the number of fingers on your right hand.  Maybe you were clever, maybe you were lucky or maybe you just played as cowardly as possible.  Whatever method you used, you spat in the Reaper's face just by going into the danger zone with your schmuck PC.

Traveller campaign update numero dos

You know what's kind of a kick in the head?  Running Traveller with Tom in the group.  Tom was in the game store version of the Wessex campaign and acquitted himself admirably as Lankii the Elf.  GMing a sci-fi game with him at the table was interesting because of the following:

• Dude helped build the particle accelerator at Fermilab.
• His second career is as a sci-fi author.
• He was among the original Traveller playtester and ran a campaign back in the seventies.
• He's on a first-name basis with most of the principals involved at good ol' GDW.

Fortunately, he's also a cool cat who did not beat me over the head with his credentials.  He asked some very penetrating questions* prior to the start of the campaign and kept me on my astro-science toes through Wednesday's session.  But that's okay.  Why bother GMing if the players aren't willing to push back at my supposed omniscience?  Anyway, I gave him something to think about too, because I had held back the pregen captain for him.  It's session two, he's missed session one, and suddenly he's in charge of this zillion-credit vessel and the 60 people aboard.

So the BTS Leviathan visited two more solar systems and encountered one other starship.  The first planet they encountered was another slowship colony set down on a Marslike world with a a thin, tainted atmosphere.  The locals live a Road Warrior-like existence, raiding each other in custom dunebuggies and landcruisers and whatnot.  Peaceful contact was made with the dome city closest to the dilapidated starport, where they entered into a trade agreement with Boss Udag, the fat bastard running the dome.  At first Udag wasn't sure if he wanted to do business with these soft outworlders, but Jo's grunt PC Malachi turned him around.  Malachi ended up in a duel with one of Udag's warriors, over a misunderstanding at a banquet.  Not only did the starhopper trounce one of his best men, Malachi put a cherry on top of the affair by gratuitously beheading the mofo.  That's why the party decided to name the joint Vegas.  What happens there, stays there.

While the away team was enjoying this little scene, the bridge crew were dealing with an issue of their own, in the form of a bogey burning through space towards them at 4 or 5gs.  The vessel turns out to be the Shoji, another Levathan-class merchant explorer owned by rival corporation MacLellan Factors.  The Shoji hails them: "Marcucci, stand down and prepare to be boarded!"

At this point I almost started a third action sequence.  The shuttlecraft was at the northern polar region cutting ice for fuel (no gas giant in system and the poles are the only standing water on the surface).  With no stats prepared and no PCs present for this operation, I decided on the spot to roll a 7 or less on 2d6 for the shuttlecraft to be jumped by yetis.  That's not in the module, I was just being a dick.  But for most of the night my dice were going the way of the party.

Case in point: the Shoji incident.  The bridge crew did the smart and totally not-PC thing of not immediately going for the space combat rules.  They figured out that the Shoji had misidentified them as the Marcucci, a vessel of their same class that had been hijacked and turned pirate a few years back.  What neither party knew was that the boys back at MacLellan corporate HQ had altered the Identify Friend or Foe software on all their vessels in the subsector, intentionally misidentifying the Leviathan as the pirate vessel, in hopes of provoking an incident.  With the PC's catching me by surprise by actually exercising restraint, I gave Captain Zadek of the Shoji a 10+ to figure out what was going on.

Dice came up a five and a six, so instead of a shoot-out Tom's PC and Zadek talked things out like civilized men, over a bottle of wine.  Their gentleman's agreement included a non-aggression pact, respect for prior claims, and splitting part of the unexplored subsector between them.  As this was happening the party hothead was racking his brain as to how to get onboard the Shoji and seize the vessel, bomb them or at least steal their stardata, but this general belligerence never made it out of the planning stage.

So both vessels zoomed out of Vegas with no space shooting.  Boo hiss.  For their efforts the PCs come away with a trade agreement with a local tinpot, knowledge that at least one vessel in the subsector won't shoot them on site, some ornate hand-crafted lowtech weapons, and quite a bit of local booze, which the party has yet to discover is actually a byproduct of the dome's waste recycle system.  Good times.

The next system is a dense blue giant that captured a brown dwarf and one of its satellites during a close pass a few million years ago.  The brown dwarf got so close to the main star that all that is left of it nowadays is a spiral of gaseous material.  The one world is another Mars-type in an orbit highly eccentric to the star's plane of rotation.  This planet sports a series of wicked scars in the form of multiple parallel Valles Marineris style super-canyons.  Near the bottom of one of these mega-rifts, close to the canyon wall, is a beacon emitting a nav signal on an old imperial frequency.

The landing party puts the pinnace down on a small landing pad near the beacon, which is mounted atop a fairly large building of cheap corrugated prefab metal slabs leaning right up against canyon wall.  No one is out and about, so they hoof it to the front door and pull the rope, ringing some bell with a nice, satisfying low-register bong.  The front door opens and they are greeted by a human in a monk's robe, wearing a holy symbol-type amulet depicting a seven-pointed star.  End of session.


*"Are we playing the standard Traveller rules?" "Yeah, the original three books, roll 2d6 for most stuff and hope for a high number, etc." "No, I mean the jump drive and interstellar communication rules. Those are what make a game Traveller."  That dude is smart.