Ok, I’m iterating on my supply chip idea for the megadungeon I’m planning on running. Currently I’m thinking I’ll run this in Cairn, mainly because people understand Cairn and it’s easy to onboard people, and it has a hazard dice.
Let there be light!
But this got me thinking to how I could reproduce the risk/reward loop of traditional play better while maintaining my rules-light improvisational style. I’m thinking:
You spend a torch to advance a room, or to search the room.
Whenever someone spends a torch, there’s a 1-in-6 chance of a wandering monster.
Three torches fit in a slot, as per standard Cairn rules.
In classic play, it’s not too different: On average, you use a torch every ten in-game minutes, and on average, you spend ten in-game minutes per action in a room. On average, you encounter a wandering monster every 6 rooms (although this can vary). So I can a smush all these conveniently base six facts together to convert the existing economy into a token exchange.
I imagine at the table we’d have a stack of poker chips and cash them in to move deeper into the dungeon. I like the tension that would build, as your parties piles of poker chips grow smaller and you realise you need to figure out how to safely get back.
It does leave a dilemma: If you run out of poker chips, how do you escape the dungeon? The obvious answer is that remaining torches impact your roll to return. So, what would a roll to return look like in Cairn? My gut feeling is it should be a save that doesn’t rely on your stat for success. So:
A roll to return is a roll to avoid bad outcomes from returning home from the dungeon.
A representative PC rolls a d20 and compare the results to the total number of torch uses in the party’s possession (including hirelings; for the purpose of this lantern and oil can be used). If they roll equal to or under that number, they pass. Otherwise, they fail.
A 1 is always a success, and a 20 is always a failure.
If the return home was dangerous, on a fail, all PCs take 1d6 damage per point over the target.
If the return home was instead arduous, the party drops 1 slot of inventory per point over the target.
PCs reduced to 0 HP are left behind but may not be dead, depending on the nature of the danger.
Five Torches Deep inspired the arduous and dangerous distinction. The intent here is that if a dragon was between the party and home it would be dangerous, but usually it would be an arduous journey. I’m not sure if the possibility of taking 19d6 damage is likely, or if I should instead just say 1 damage (which is as deadly as 19 damage at the extreme, but far less a deterrent on a narrow fail).
The main unintended consequence of this rule set is that small parties are at a disadvantage, which is why I added the “including hirelings” parenthesis.
The totality of these rules is clumsy, but I like a lot about how it simplifies the Dungeon Events table. I’m not sure if it’s worth the trade off, though: Is it better to give the players more control over their risk and more understanding of their rewards?
I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.
I was going to start layout for Bridewell today, but instead a pre-release copy of Fantastic Medieval Campaigns by my friend Marcia B of Traverse Fantasy arrived on my doorstep, and so I cancelled everything to have a read of this beautiful hardcover book. If you haven’t heard, Fantastic Medieval Campaigns (hereafter FMC) is an effort to reorganise and clarify the original three books published published by Gary Gygax in ’74. It’s a challenging book to write about, because if you aren’t already familiar with the rules inside it, I can’t imagine you’re likely to be buying it; and the rules have been pored over by fifty years of wargamers and roleplaying gamers, and so I have only a little to say about the rules themselves. I’ll start elsewhere though.
I don’t have a photo to post of the actual book in my hands (I tried to take one myself, but it didn’t do it justice).
This book is a beauty. Square-format, hardcover, with gorgeous paperstock coloured separately for each chapter of the book, and a warm, soothing pastel palette, it looks amazing on your shelf and even better on your coffee table (the rainbow block colouring looks excellent enough that I wish I could have it spine facing in on my bookshelf). The layout is big, chunky and retro, consistent and happy to let the words have space, and this generosity of page count brings with it clarity of structure and intent. The monochrome art is by an all-star cast, but is charming, sketchy and janky in a way that feels true to the source material (special mention goes to the exceptional maps by Gus L). All in all an exceptional effort from a largely one-woman show.
The text is split into the original three sections that came in separate booklets and two appendixes, concluding with a short postface that provides a thesis statement for the whole project. Throughout we have a dry reading of the original text, rearranged and with a gentle editorial touch, with Marcia’s sly humour slipping through at regular intervals (the recurring typographic balrog joke deserves an award for best in-joke). I can’t overstate the value in the rearrangement (it has an index!!!), but more important is the editorial touch: Light enough at the beginning that a side-by-side reading might be difficult to differentiate; examples of Marcia’s voice and that of her artists shine through piecemeal initially (such as the delightfully bizarre Red Queen’s Catacombs). By the end, Marcia’s voice is more insistent.
FMC communicates more clearly than reading the original booklets that the included combat rules are second-grade dross and should be ignored in favour of the first appendix, Chain of Command. I think that incorporating these rules directly into the text of the first three chapters would have communicated that better, although Marcia explains herself well in the first appendix and her fidelity to the original text in that regard is admirable. Subtly, the case is presented that Chain of Command is an essential aspect of the ruleset, and lays bare the fact that this is a miniatures war game intended to not only be played as heroes but also the allies they command, in a much more transparent fashion than I previously realised. This brings to light a number of misadventures that the hobby has undertaken over its history, releases like DL7: Dragons of Glory, Battlesystem, and Birthright, and it repositions the 4th edition of Dungeons and Dragons in my esteem as the edition most faithful to the spirit of the original 1974 version of that game.
FMC also communicates to me something more palpable: Despite the beauty of the book in my hands, Dungeons and Dragons was a DIY project from the beginning. Marcia’s interjections (like the implication that the hydra was a kitbashed tyrannosaur on Gygax’s field) remind me of the suggestion that the owlbear was based on a Japanese figurine bought at a garage sale. The leaps and gaps present in the text, even with Marcia’s thoughtful reordering (it has an index!!!) and targeted appendices make it clear that this was not and never will be a complete game, but rather a springboard for your dive into roleplaying as a hobby. It clarifies why Gygax felt the urgency he demonstrated when he released the first edition of the game, minimising and excluding players of earlier and parallel versions to capitalise on his accidental DIY success. More wistfully and hopefully, it makes me imagine a world where, instead of following the example of wargames-in-an-envelope, the hobby had followed the path of DIY zine culture that sprung up at the same time: I imagine what we could have had, a history of disposable punk DIY aesthetics.
Marcia’s postface is placed in the second appendix, as a gesture to the fact that in this second appendix she suggests options not present in the original text, and hence that her own voice as a game designer shines through the strongest. I think, however, overstates how much space she succeeds in placing between her and the earlier text, although not as a game designer, but rather as a writer: Where reading the original texts is an exercise in blinking and refocusing each turn of the page, Marcia’s dry wit and familiarity with the history of the hobby as it came to be, brings more (admittedly academic) joy to the material than Gygax could ever conjure. I don’t think the presence of her editorial voice here is a bad thing at all, after all, this entire project is effectively (and I’m projecting a little here, but not a lot) an opportunity for Marcia to avoid reading those books and read something better instead. I want that too.
In game design, I consider a lot the perspectives that we bring to our design. I often see the perspective of popular culture (those that bring Lucas-esque and other worlds to our modules and systems) and those that borrow from the direct legacy of Gygax (everything published by WoTC for 5e in the pejorative, but also innovators on that legacy like Gus L in the approbatory). I see in some of my favourite modern authors, like Luke Gearing and Ben Laurence, the perspective of a novelist bringing a fresh and new angle on how we might arrange and describe the worlds we play in. And I see in some, like Luca Rejec’s work, the perspective of a visual artist. Zedeck Siew brings a poetic perspective to bear on the field of roleplaying game design; something I’ve seen alluded to by others, like Brad Kerr of Wyvern Song. But what Marcia does in FMC is to come at game design from the well-informed, accurate but still subjective perspective of works of history. It’s a unique voice, and I cannot but welcome any fresh approaches to game design that come my way. It’s akin to a translation in many ways: It’s not the original authors voice, but sometimes it communicates new things and clearer.
I can’t imagine anyone who isn’t familiar with the original rules are likely to be buying this, but if you aren’t familiar with them, and you’re interested in them, this is assuredly a much better place to start. If you’re interested in running those original rules, this is also probably the best place to start, as all the hard work has already been done for you. Has Marcia persuaded me to run the ruleset? No. I’ve failed to run them multiple times before, and they’re interesting as a historical artifact more than they are as a viable playstyle for me. But nevertheless, I go back and read those original books regularly, and FMC will definitely replace the originals for me, as they’re clearer, easier to locate information in (it has an index!!!), and more enjoyable to read. Fantastic Medieval Campaigns is an exceptional work, making sense of a hash of rules split over many books and supplements, bringing a much needed lightness of touch to the proceedings.
I’ve stated my biases here, but as a remarkable insight into diy elfgame history, I couldn’t recommend it more.
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
Fangwitch’s Falls is a 24-page pointcrawl written and illustrated by Em, for Cairn. It’s about a pending flood that will crush a local village if the supernatural cause is not investigated. But it’s an adventure that is not so crass as to say that outright, and I like the degree of You’re Not An Idiot present in this module a lot.
Cover art
The writing here is often good, sometimes great, “A coiled and spined thing the size of a baleen whale. Destructive, though not necessarily malicious. It resides behind the Falls.” This is the whole descriptionof the big bad. I love this brevity and evocativeness. More authors need to trust in their words and audience like this. The details behind the nature of the Fangwitch and the weapon to defeat it with are randomised. For me, I’d rather these be set in stone; I’d rather a single excellent idea than a dozen less interesting ones. Random tables and lists are best used for things that are effectively quantum in the first place: people you encounter along the road, loot, magical effects and the like.
The locations are summarised in ten or so words each, and all fit in a single page. This page also has rules for events and the events themselves. This is excellent work. Then the locations are expanded, each with a single page summary and occasionally with an extra page of NPCs or something like that. These are uniformly pretty good, although the elimination of redundancy here means some flipping to and from the summaries.
It finishes off with NPCs, loot, and gear packages for Cairn. These are whimsical and designed to match the fairytale vibe of the rest of the module.
Overall, this module is absolute fire. This is the kind of module I wish I saw more of, and at a larger scale. I prefer it when it veers from fairy tale into horror (which it does in parts), but f you and your table appreciate dark fairytale vibes, terse evocative writing, and you don’t mind improvising appropriately or the lack of dungeons, this is a great small pointcrawl.
Edit: This post was nominated for a Bloggie Award! Thank you for all your support everyone!
My hill to die on this week, is just we need to stop moralising the type of games people play. This overly long post is a summary of the ideas I’ve spoken of the last day or so on the topic. Bits have been taken from a bunch of conversations, and honestly I can’t remember what I said to whom. It’s not a response to any three-hour long video essays, but rather the discourse that they may have generated. I, like Marcia, am vagueposting the discourse.
Part I: It’s fine to just not like it
Here are some basic points that I’m just going to lay out there without any argument because I’m not interested in getting into discussions about what evil is.
Scaffolding isn’t inherently evil and guilty of coercion or “mind control”.
Playing free of scaffolding isn’t inherently inferior and players who prefer it are not allergic to narrative.
Bad creators do not equate to bad design.
Bad design probably doesn’t exist, and if it does, it is entirely subjective.
I am becoming frustrated with defending uninspired PTBA games and 5e because people on the internet keep criticising them on dubious moral or “bad design” grounds instead of the primary valid grounds to criticise them: I don’t like it.
It is super valid to not like something. It doesn’t need moral justification. Here’s some reasons we might not like a game:
“I don’t like 5e because it’s hard to DM”
“I don’t like 5e because I don’t want to support WOTC”
“I don’t like OSE because i want my characters story to be more supported”
“I don’t like Dread because i think jenga blocks are childish”
“I don’t like Unspeakable Power because it doesn’t adapt Apocalypse World’s themes to the new setting and genre”
“I don’t like Mausritter because i hate little cardboard backpacks”
“I don’t like Lancer because the lore is too white person”
Honestly it’s fun and liberating to just not like things rather than moralise them. I can like or dislike anything for any reason! Or for none! I have never read the Wretched but I don’t like it (sorry Chris). Furthermore, I can still criticise you for liking something I don’t like! It just doesn’t grant me the moral high ground! It just makes me a snob!
Don’t moralise the games people play or the players of those games. You’re allowed to have design preferences. You don’t even have to justify them. Neither does anyone else.
Part II: But the designer is coercing me!
No they’re not. Claims that designing to incentivise my acting like a rogue or a superhero or whatever are “mind control” are overblown and short sighted. Wanderhome playbooks are not a form of coercive abuse.
Like, be a high school debater for a second and google the definition of coerce. I’m opting into the game, so it sure isn’t against my will. What’s the actual threat here? If I don’t like how your game makes me feel I won’t be coerced by it, I’ll change the rules or play another game. There are already too many damned games on my shelf, let alone in existence. These are inherently absurd statements and we need to make some less absurd claims (see “Reasons Not To Like Games”).
The terms “coercion” “low trust” and “mind control” are at best hyperbolic, and at worst attempts to erect straw men. But they do refer to something, which is something I prefer to call scaffolding or maybe scaffolded design (oh shoot, bad essay design, I mentioned this at the top didn’t I? too late to rewrite).
Scaffolded design are design decisions that are both supportive and restrictive. I mightn’t want that — I usually don’t and hence I am resentful I’m even writing this damned post — but plenty of players do and honestly it’s rude to assume they’re bad people or stupid or whatever derogative we’ve chosen today for players of games we don’t like.
Tangential aside: “I’m not criticising the players just the game” or “just the designer” whatever imaginary theorist, stop applying moral judgements based on someone’s theory of game design. Game designers are utterly impotent the moment they go to print, half of them tell me to ignore their rules (an apparently arrogant or negligent act), and games have no capacity to enforce anything. Neither designer nor game have any actual agency in this situation, so the judgement being cast falls on the player, even if we’re pretending it doesn’t.
The Monomyth Thread is one interpretation of a very long discussion, but suffice to say one valid interpretation of that discussion is that, in fact, some players feel unsafe when exposed to unscaffolded play (or at least feel safer when exposed to scaffolded play). Again, not me, I chafe against highly scaffolded play. But it’s just preference. It’s all just preference.
Preference is really really important. I think, for example, that 5e is not popular because it’s got Hasbro and it’s got Stranger Things and Critical Role (of course they’re factors), but primarily because it scaffolds original character design in a really satisfying way. So people really like playing it. It’s their valid preference. See part I for valid reasons not to like 5e that aren’t Bad Design or 5e Ruins Indie Designers Finances.
We’re allowed to have design preferences and not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves.
Part III: A digression, I don’t even like rules
I mentioned that I’m resentful I have to write this damned post, and that’s because I’m not even particularly interested in scaffolded game design (sorry my scaffolded design friends). C’mon ya’ll know this, I review modules and the modules that I write (go buy Hiss!) are dynamic, interconnected networks of locations and people designed with as few rules as possible, because the crowd gaspsrules elide. I can build a sculpture out of knives, but knives are better used to carve the sculpture. It’s all art though. It’s all sculpting.
I play with as little scaffolding as possible. At the end of the last session I played in, completely without planning or forethought, a heroic knight questing to redeem himself but down on his luck, sacrificed himself to save a village from soon. I love the serendipity of Ferdrek dying heroically which both suited his character and happened without any design, but fate conspired to make him a hero, and that’s so cool! For me, it is less significant and satisfying when it is designed. A “Final Move” called “Sacrifice Yourself” could never be as cool as that, for me. That’s why I don’t like heavily scaffolded games as much as lightly scaffolded games. Not because they’re immoral. That would be an absurd connection to draw.
Whatever inflates your balloon floats your damned boat. It’s a preference. I’m not a bad person for disagreeing with you. I’m not coercing you or controlling your mind by putting that move into my game. I’m using a different and equally valid design theory that applies rules in different ways to different ends.
I don’t like running Lancer. Too many moving parts. But I like playing a mech pilot in it. Because different theories apply different rules to different ends. And that’s fine. It’s not a competition and it’s not a damned moral judgement, it’s a design approach. Words are not our only tools as game designers, as if painters only use paint and don’t use theories of colour and mind.
We’re allowed to have design preferences; not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves; I can just use different design theories and approaches to make different things and that’s valid.
Part IV: Manipulative Design
What if the game designer designs the game to do something that is morally bankrupt? Honestly I think this is possible. I call it manipulative design rather than mind control because I don’t want to be hyperbolic. Even this kind of design is subject to the whims of the players; designers may sometimes make bad decisions but are never gods, and even WOTC does not enforce its games rules with a private army (at least so far, although the fact that they have one is disconcerting to say the least). Design I feel is manipulative is specifically design that’s aimed at making players (not their characters) act a certain way rather than rely on them being humans.
I don’t consider games with a rigid premise or structure manipulative. Bluebeard’s Bride is an incredibly challenging text, but if you’re fully informed regarding what you’re getting into, I don’t think it’s manipulative. I don’t regard games with that encourage antisocial play manipulative. In Paranoia characters are encouraged to betray and backstab each other but if I snuck back to a friends place, slept with their spouse, and stole their valuables you can’t say Paranoia made me do it. I’d reserve manipulative design as a term for places where it’s aimed at the players as people.
Zedeck wrote at length of an example in Torchbearer, so if you’re not sure these design approaches exist, please read that. I think I personally can draw a line in the sand to say “I’m not going to use game mechanics to manipulate the behaviour of my irl friends”, and I think we need a category so we can be critical of these kind of design choices. But even so, maybe that line is harder to draw if you primarily run tournament or cons or store-based drop-ins? I can’t speak to that, but even then I question your knowledge of the human condition if you think you can design games to make people be kinder.
Conclusion: You’re Not An Idiot
We’re allowed to have design preferences; not only is scaffolding not coercion, it’s actually essential for some people to enjoy themselves; we can just use different design theories and approaches to make different things and that’s valid; I personally draw a line in the sand at making rules that dictate how players (not characters) act outside of the game. That’s the conclusion.
I write my modules (buy Hiss!) and other stuff based upon the design principle The Player Is Not An Idiot, which accompanies any other design principles I have (none of which are “game design is like dog training but with people”, because it’s not compatible with The Player Is Not An Idiot; allow me a little snark in closing). It’s a good principle, and if everyone treated everyone else in the hobby as not idiots, I probably wouldn’t have spent my afternoon writing this ridiculous post instead of taking a bath.
Thanks for reading it, though, if you got this far. Read Marcia’s post on incentives for another perspective.
Today I hit “publish” on the small module I’ve been playtesting the last few weeks, Hiss!
Hiss is a horror module featuring a doomed village for your diy elfgame. It’s short, dense and flexible, and features simmering tensions that could explode over a short two or three sessions, or could become a mysterious feature of your campaign if you chose to base your adventuring party out of it.
My goal with Hiss was to write a short module (after spending six months just writing Bridewell, and it’s probably not going to release before Christmas), that benefited from a lot of the lessons learnt from Bridewell while presenting it in a more traditional and compact manner. Hiss, therefore, has what I think are excellent maps (although I wish I could have fit text keying onto them), it has incredibly terse description, it has a large and interconnected cast, and it has tools to help the referee connect all the disparate elements together on the fly without more familiarity with the zine other than a read-through (although I’d strongly encourage you take notes as things occur). I write my modules with a strong The Player Is Not An Idiot philosophy: I expect the referee to be able to springboard off the terse descriptions and interconnections to create a fun time. But in exchange, you get something dense. There’s a lot more content here than you’d expect from a 30 page module; our playtests got almost seven hours of play out of five or six locations, and there are thirty in total.
I fully expect some people will bounce right off my terse style and my reliance on the referee’s intelligence, improvisation and skill, but that’s ok. I think if you work with what I’ve given you, you will probably grow as a referee, and if you are already experienced, you’ll find something that leans towards your strengths. That said, all my readers were impressed. Sandro said with this I was “Legitimately creating the lexicon for what I look for in good adventures” and Marcia said “I am blown away by Idle Cartulary’s adventure design!”. I’m pretty proud of it, although it’s a low-key release compared to the scope of the upcoming Bridewell.
If you’re still reluctant, I’ve posted two session reports for Hiss (session 1, and session 2), although it definitely has spoilers in it.
You can buy it here! Community copies are available for those who experience marginalisation or economic instability!
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
In Carmine is a 17 page module for Mothership written, designed and illustrated by S. Murphy, a mysteriously nameless kiwi. In Carmine is a fairly typical set up for a Mothership module: A team of grunts are sent to a deadly planet in the far reaches of space with little to no information. Mothership, to me, is best as a horror scenario (despite many excellent Mothership modules focusing on different things), and so I don’t mind the lack of a novel setup at all.
The actual front cover.
The art here, while sparse, is great, and fits the humorous bent on body horror that the module leans into. The layout is clear, although the choice of warm browns as the primary palette clashes a little with the map colour choices and the art in a way that isn’t to my taste. In the spirit of Mothership modules, there is nary a white space left on the page and this module even spurns front and back covers, which is a choice that confused me at first, but was an excellent one.
The reason it was an excellent choice, is that the cover instead is a one-sheet on the planet of Carmine. It ends in “But those who know what Carmine truly is would tell you a different story.”, and then as soon as you turn the page it launches into the set up for the module. Now, that set up is far wordier than I like it to be, and a change in the nature of the villain occurs in a few pages that renders some of it unnecessary information. But the unconventional structural choices propelled me forward through the exposition anyway.
Running the adventure has a solidly excellent technique in it that most single-track modules could use. It provides three descriptors: wet, pulsating, falling apart. “If all else fails, stick to these and you’ll be fine“. It’s a genius move, and makes it very easy for the warden to lean into the horror of the scenario without reaching for the thesaurus or relying on the text of the module. More modules could use key universal descriptions like this. The introductory section also has the best appendix N I’ve ever read, mainly because it conjures a very specific atmosphere that I don’t even need to search for me to apply to the module. Again, more modules could apply a creative, evocative appendix N in the same manner to great effect.
The next section is a hex-crawl I’m not so sure about. I love the simple iconic map, and the names are evocative on that first page. It uses polyhedral dice for weather, which departs from Mothership wisdom (it uses them to good effect, but nevertheless); the weather for this strange planet is weird and fantastic though. You have a 1-in-3 chance of a terrain specific encounter, but the direct route to the laboratory means you’re more likely to only visit each terrain twice, reducing your chance of finding the most interesting encounters. I would run this as a point crawl, because there are eight unique encounters and seven hexes, so I might as well generate them ahead of time. Part of my reasoning there is because you’re not exploring, but rather you’re heading directly from the drop off to the lab. The encounters themselves are overwritten but excellent. Most have two paragraphs when they could be one. They’re not excessive, irregardless, I’d just rather they be shorter and punchier, knowing that my taste in brevity and punchiness is higher on the scale than most.
The lab, however, nails it. Generally pretty brief and punch descriptions, using bolding to highlight important points, but not excessively. I question why loot is highlighted here, because it’s something you’d search the text for, and it’s better used to jog your memory that there’s an airlock here and tendrils extend along the roof. The stuff is quite evocative and provoke good responses from me: An elevator “when it’s in motion it grunts like it’s struggling against something” which makes me want to describe the sound of flesh unpeeling around the steel cable and blood oozing through the elevator roof. The maps are simple and effective, although given the exceptional artistic ability apparent, it would be useful to have more detail to improve the fluency at the table. It’s always easier to refer to a visually engaging map when possible.
The final boss is a humorous and sudden twist, with multiple clear ways to defeat it that the players are highly likely to shoot themselves in the foot over, which is exactly how it should be. More foreshadowing and temptation around these consequences would be beneficial, but ending a Mothership module with a philosophical discussion about predestination and free will is something that will be memorable for years, if it does eventuate.
Overall, In Carmine is an absolute banger of a short module. I’d love to run this as a one-shot (although it recommends two sessions). I wouldn’t recommend it to those averse to body horror or to meat and gore-themed visuals, but despite my criticisms, I’m not very mixed in my view on In Carmine: I can’t recommend it highly enough, and it’s (foolishly in my opinion) free, so you don’t have an excuse not to.
Hiss is the zine-length adventure I wrote as a palate cleanser after finishing my gothic horror sandbox Bridewell. It’s a 30 page adventure, inspired by one of my favourite classic modules, Against the Cult of the Reptile God. Previous Play Report here. Ferdrek and Ursaline, played by Sandro of Fail Forward and Marcia of Traverse Fantasy, had made buddies in the Wild Weasel Inn, and decided to leave them there, and head straight for the Church of the Willowmother, under which their captive cultist had told them the cult was based.
They climbed the giant willow tree in the churchyard, which was sickly and dying, and found a swarm of snakes in a bleeding hollow in its trunk. They decided to burn the snakes alive, and in doing so, the willow itself burst into flames, shuddering and shrieking. They fled behind the church, leaving a commotion behind, and abseiled into a crater that swallowed a portion of the church.
They descended into a sandy catacomb filled with red-clay sealed niches. On the descent, they stopped to investigate a strange tapping, and found a reptilian creature making golden jewelled scales in the middle of the night. They killed it, but not before an earthquake rocked the catacombs they were in and banging and screaming began to echo throughout the area. They followed someone who lit a candle, Ferdrek knocking them out with a headbut, but more followed! Ursaline made a vow to a god with no name to bring her vengeance, and was gifted a magical wooden sword! They opened the door, unleashing savage root-animated skeleton women who attacked the cultist who had come to investigate!
Dashing past the fight, they found both a culvert through which they could escape, and the sanctified bones of a long-dead priestess. They bargained with her furious spirit, animated with the anger and pain of a tortured goddess, to not slay all the cultists until they had slain the cultists’ leaders. The priestess agreed, but only for a short while. Her rage must be satisfied.
Down the culvert, they found their way to a huge geode and an adjoining dream-wrought temple, occupied by a house-sized snake god with a bulging belly, sleeping. They doused her with oil, but Ferdrek touched her mind and was overwhelmed, his mind near breaking point. Ursaline gutted her, to pull whatever she had devoured out of her belly, but it was not food but a child: a gestating galaxy the size of a dumpster. Avoiding it, they attacked with their magical sword and flaming oil, slaying the great snake as it thrashed and burnt, almost bringing the catacomb down around them.
With her final breath, the snake-god screamed an immense psychic scream, wiping Ferdrek’s mind and leaving him dead. Same psychic scream fried the snakes that inhabited the villagers, and awoke what villagers were not already awake due to the burning willow. Ursaline carried Ferdrek’s dead body to the surface, and laid him to burial, burning, upon the shore.
Wow. I don’t mind my zine-length module running it in two sessions, but Marcia and Sandro speed-ran this dungeon! All through legal means, though, it’s a significantly jacquaysed dungeon and they took some interesting routes, and chose to raid it at 3 am, which meant there were less (awake) foes between them and their goal.
It never ceases to amaze me how consistently my expectations for what players will choose to do are upended in playtesting. I never anticipated the burning of the willow, nor the freeing of the skeletal priestesses, nor the bargain with them. I appreciate the interaction of their description with Ursaline’s vow, not something I anticipated having to deal with.
It’s also great to know that I packed enough content into 30 pages that we can run two 3 hour sessions and still completely miss two entire factions and countless characters. Writing a module that can run equally as a high-speed raid, or a slow-burn base town, is really cool. I didn’t anticipate the high-speed raid, but it worked, and the pressure I tried to work into it was clearly a success (although rests may have helped Ferdrek survive the night).
I picked up on a few minor problems with the module, but honestly, the integration of maps and key was pretty good, I added and rewrote a few lines, but largely it ran as intended. Sandro tweeted about it here and Marcia here. I’m pretty happy to revise a little art, apply my changes, do a proof read, and publish Hiss, I think.
Y’all have probably heard people say “It’s just an elfgame, don’t take it so seriously” or some such sentiment. It’s always been a soft derogatory term, although some disagree. I think it’s soft derogatory because while elfgames are fun, they’re still, I think, important.
At some point, I was chatting to Marcia B of Traverse Fantasy, about how I don’t like identifying as OSR, for a wide range of reasons, but also didn’t love the alternatives.
I want to distance myself from the complex and sometimes problematic history of the OSR, I don’t want to define myself in relation to it like NSR and it’s variations do, sword-dream is well intentioned and has largely faded away.
And Marcia said (this is how I remember it) “I just want to play diy elfgames”
So now I use “diy elfgames” instead of OSR, because it’s a better descriptor (or rather actually describes) the TTRPG culture I’m a part of: That is, we all play our own games cobbled together out of rules crowdsourced from other games and random blog-posts, inspired by each others cool innovations.
It’s kind of a reclamation, but mainly it’s just what I play and what most of my friends play. We’re mainly about diy elfgames.
Bathtub Reviews are an excuse for me to read modules a little more closely. I’m doing them to critique well-regarded modules from the perspective of my own table and to learn for my own module design. They’re stream of consciousness and unedited harsh critiques. I’m writing them on my phone in the bath.
Wet Grandpa is a 32 page system-agnostic module written by Evey Lockhart with art by Anxy. It is a surprisingly complex knot of family and neighbourly interactions for such a short module, becoming untangled to reveal river gods and water curses.
The player summary is brief, directive, and well-written, with a map that subtly alludes to what is to come. The game master summary is compelling, but leaves enough gaps that it feels unsatisfying. From here, the zine procedes through the town of Fatfish, the river Naiads and their dungeon, and the Wet Grandpa and his family, ending with random encounters along the river Whey.
Evey writes very well, particularly when the topic has a dark fairy-tale magic in it. Her writing is at its best when it is loose and rambling, which unfortunately is at odds with the ease of usability in this module. I think more sense could be made with more conscious use of headings and more judicious use of bold, italics and small caps, which in combination make the read more challenging than it needs to be. The art here is all about the vibes, and varies from fantastic, evocative and useful, to jarring and out of place. The maps, especially, are perfect in service of aesthetics but not clear enough to provide guidance when the text is unclear.
The writing is uneven and feels unclear regarding its own identity, or perhaps is shackled to the past whilst desiring to innovate on the form. At one point, a two page timeline of the past fifty years of Fatfish history, detailing the slow decline in a pointless amount of detail. In another, a trap is given gygaxian detail, but the dungeon map is unclear where the trap is (or if it recurs) and key information regarding where it might be lies in a separate section. In a third, the naiads are statted out like gygax’s gods, but treated in the text as far more ineffable than those demons meant for slaying. Inconsistencies like this make it challenging to understand what Wet Grandpa is trying to be.
I think Wet Grandpa is trying to be exactly the kind of module I like. Fatfish is a fascinating town, dead and with a few small families living off its corpse. The river-naiads are ineffable gods, vengeful and fearful of the new Wet Grandpa. Wet Grandpa is a deadly power, a challenge to the gods, and entirely unaware and continuing to potter around their farm not knowing why his wishes come true; his children fleeing in fear. Nobody cares about the party; everyone is just getting on with their lives. This social aspect of the module so often hits the mark. But the naiads are pages to run a few simple characters, as is Wet Grandpa. I don’t think the gorgeous evocative writing adds anything to my running it; I’m a little hesitant to call it evocative, as there’s so much writing in places that I’m left without impression rather than with one.
I want to love it, and I kind of do love it? But running Wet Grandpa would be a labour of love, I suspect. I might be wrong, though. Perhaps the pace is slow enough that finding my way through this short zine wouldn’t be a barrier. Perhaps meeting these weird, doomed characters would be the exact pleasure I want them to be. Wet Grandpa achieves more in only a few pages than many modules achieve in hundreds. It doesn’t live up to its confused ambitions, but if a fairy-tale appallachian river cruise with horror elements feels like your jam, it’s worth reading, and hopefully it’s length abnegates it’s structural failings.
I wanted to playtest Hiss, the zine-length adventure I wrote as a palate cleanser after the huge effort that was writing Bridewell, and also as a way to reinforce some of the lessons learnt in Bridewell without putting so many of the restrictions I placed on myself in writing Bridewell. It’s a 36 page adventure, inspired by one of my favourite classic modules, Against the Cult of the Reptile God.
Ferdrek and Ursaline, played by Sandro of Fail Forward and Marcia of Traverse Fantasy (surviving characters from our playtest of Bridewell), had taken up a job as caravan guards for a quick buck on their quest to prove Ferdrek’s nobility, for a merchant named Clermont Noble. Their wagon’s axel broke just outside the village of Plum Oleander, and they, along with the merchant’s boy Salmon, dragged it to the wainwright in town for repairs. As they walked through town, they saw a strange figure staring at them from the porch of home they passed, who disappeared the moment they glanced away.
After washing off in the river, they asked if there was another inn in town aside from the one their boss was staying at, and a bypasser gave them directions, before making an off hand comment that “I don’t blame ye for not staying at the Wild Weasel”. Ferdrek inquired further as to the comment, and the bypasser made an allusion to “unsavoury and queer folk frequent there” before going on his business, nice to meet you. They decided to be sure their employer (and his associated paycheque) was safe before finding a room.
The Wild Weasel was clearly recently renovated and sterile, with an odd morose crowd, although the innkeeper was charming enough. Ferdrek pushed regarding renovations, but the Ould, the innkeeper, denied it repeatedly, getting a little worked up and hissing at Ferdrek. Meanwhile, Ursaline ventured out back, finding a tower where two men were talking about how they were going to get the new man in the fancy room – Clermont Noble. Ferdrek and Ursaline decided to take rooms here, to prevent their boss from being robbed.
In their rooms, they discovered a peep hole and a secret door, allowing unwanted access to their room. Behind the secret door was a narrow passage, with entryways to the other rooms in the inn, as well as a ladder leading to the tower. In the tower, they discovered a chest full of gold and jewels; too much to carry. Ferdrek headed to the local country store for a barrel, asked Salmon to be their watch at the price of a jeweled necklace. Ursaline drove off Humble, man who was reading an anatomy treatise disguised as the scripture book of “Mentis Chisor”, a deity she had never heard of. The three of them loaded the barrel three quarters full of treasure before the pair of men entered the passage, clearly coming to spy on them now. They quickly hid in their rooms, and acted natural for a while.
They decided to get their boss drunk to persuade him to stay in the same room as them, and their ploy worked. He passed out on their bed, and they put a bear trap in front of the secret door, smeared grease in front of the front door, and waited for the thugs to show. The first to show was Humble, whose leg was snapped by the bear trap, causing a stand off between the thugs who were bottlenecked by the secret door, and the party. After tense proceedings, the thugs retreated, but Ferdrek wanted answers, and pursued them, resulting in a combat where Ferdrek was struck by a blacksmith’s hammer in the gut, cut with a poison blade, but managed to take out two foes before the third fled. But not before he was offered to come with them to join their religion.
They bound the three unconscious foes and threw them on a bed, noticing they were hissing despite being asleep. Examining them closely, a snake leapt from the mouth of the wainwright’s wife at Ursaline’s face, narrowly missing her, and dove for the door when it missed her. It was caught up in the grease, lost speed, and was crushed by her cudgel while the wainwright’s wife began to fit uncontrollably. Ursaline healed her, and they examined the other two: One had a snake in his mouth, the other not. They extracted one snake, killed it, and awoke them both.
While the two that had snakes in their mouths knew nothing but the nights they were taken and fed the snakes, the other new that there was a secret cult in town, that threatened him and so he joined them against his will. He said that he had been secretly working against them – stealing from them even! But Ferdrek and Ursaline didn’t trust him. He also told them that not everyone in town had been taken by the snake cult. They agreed, they needed to stop this cult from doing what had been done to the blacksmith and the wainwright’s wife, to the rest of the town.
I was concerned that the first session of Hiss might be too slow a burn, but boy was I wrong! Two of the three major factions didn’t even factor into this session, and still it was full of action. I wasn’t even sure writing the module that the Wild Weasel Inn would be worth fully keying, as I didn’t expect it to be a major factor in play, but instead in this session it’s serving as a primary base and held up to a full three hours of play, and they haven’t even full explored it yet. We left off where we did because we ran out of time (we’re running early my time, but quite late Marcia and Sandro’s time), but there’s a lot of room to move.
I knew that once we were out of the initial orientation to the location this module would go off, so further playtesting will just enable me to streamline and make some specifics better; it was this initial session that was challenging. As with Bridewell, there’s a bit of flipping through the book because there are connections and characters all over the place, and it’s hard to predict where they’ll occur first. This is something that would be much easier to manage if I had the zine in my hands, as I’d dog ear or bookmark the relevant sections, and I’d be taking notes on the page. I ran it from the pdf, and so there were a few moments where I was scrolling for the page ref, which isn’t something I like to do as it slows play.
Overall a successful playtest. I think I’ve actually underestimated how much potential play is there in this module, although it is limited somewhat by the background events that tick away regardless of what the players choose to do. But with two extra factions that it doesn’t appear Ferdrek will encounter, and with them already on the trail of the cult, it will still be an action-packed second session.
I know these petered out last time I started session reports, simply because of time, and I imagine they’ll do the same this time, but I’ll do my best, and I figure occasional session reports are better than none! Regardless Sandro tweeted about the session here as well, as did Marcia both very kindly ☺️.
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Dungeon Regular is a show about modules, adventures and dungeons. I’m Nova, also known as Idle Cartulary and I’m reading through Dungeon magazine, one module at a time, picking a few favourite things in that adventure module, and talking about them. On this episode I talk about Threshold of Evil, in Issue #10, March 1988! You can find my famous Bathtub Reviews at my blog, https://playfulvoid.game.blog/, you can buy my supplements for elfgames and Mothership at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/, check out my game Advanced Fantasy Dungeons at https://idlecartulary.itch.io/advanced-fantasy-dungeons and you can support Dungeon Regular on Ko-fi at https://ko-fi.com/idlecartulary.
Playful Void 