Meditating on ACKS and Averoigne

One who has read this blog over the years may have noticed that I haven’t posted a Lost Colonies Session report in a long time. This is not because the campaign has ended, but rather that the sessions are few and far between and nothing has really happened that I was inspired enough to write about. This is due to the fact that I am not inspired enough by the campaign in its current state to do much more and none of the guys I play with have championed more sessions than the few that we have done.

In the meantime, my group has been primarily playing AD&D with a few forays into Pathfinder. At the moment, the guys I play with are enamored by AD&D’s fiddliness — to them it represent more “choice” than other older editions of the game. I could argue that I could accomplish much of the same feel and choices with a much cleaner and simpler ruleset such as S&W or LL + AEC, but I would be missing the point.

One has to understand that the group I play with were virtually all introduced to the game with 3rd edition. As such, character builds are very important to them — it is a part of the gaming experience that they really enjoy. I have meditated on this before. I have, in contrast, scratched that itch with various war games which these guys never had as part of their gaming experience.

Every couple of months, someone at the table suggests that we play Pathfinder for a while (it being the 3ed emulation of choice). We play awhile until everyone remembers why we don’t like playing 3ed/Pathfinder. I don’t mind terribly much because I have learned to enjoy the game at lower levels and I know we will sooner rather than later go back to an older ruleset or its emulation.

What this all means, in the long run, is that I am not ever going to be able to run an Averoigne campaign with the guys I play with the way I want to — with a Holmes/Cook mash-up using either LL or S&W as a jumping off point. While it is incredibly interesting to me and something I would really like to play-test one day, it isn’t something that is going to interest my group. Thus, I am having to re-think about my approach so that I can start play-testing Averoigne and the Chateau des Faussesflammes as concepts.

Enter, of all things, Dwimmermount. My faith in that project and my patience have born fruit. One of the things that has come out of all the complications of the project is the generosity of the guys at Autarch. Via a promise made to backers, I have gotten my hands on .pdfs of ACKS and the ACKS Player Companion and done some serious reading and fiddling.

I have to say that both are excellent products, if lacking in a few tables & examples here and there which would have made my understanding and use of the products easier. I really like the fact that at its root, ACKS is B/X. I also really appreciate their interpretation of its mechanics extrapolated into the concept of proficiencies/feats, world building and the end-game.

In the end, however, I find it too fiddly. I prefer a far more organic/random interaction with world creation than these rules imply and I have never much cared for proficiencies, especially when they really emulate skills and feats that imply more roll playing than role playing. There are aspects that I think will prove very useful in the long run, but won’t really know until I actually use them at the table.

This is where I insert the however of this blog post. Even though I don’t care for the fiddliness of ACKS, I do think the guys who I play with will. It scratches the character build itch in a way that AD&D can’t but without all the stuff we don’t like about Pathfinder (I hope). For my own taste, I prefer the fiddliness of ACKS over the fiddliness of AD&D because it represents true player choice and is mechanically cleaner (and did I mention that it is basically B/X — my favorite edition of the game — with a bunch of stuff added on?).

Thus, the best chance I have of playing in my version of Averoigne with the guys I play with may very well be ACKS. As such, in the coming days I will be converting some of the work I have done on Averoigne to the ACKS system to see if what emerges is something I am still interested in playing.

Dwimmermount, 3x5 Geomorphs, The Tome of Adventure Design & Boring Adventure Design

There has been a confluence of events and ideas lately that are all peripherally related and I wanted to chew on them all in hopes of putting them all together in a way that will give every one a means of meditating upon the megadungeon/dungeon adventure if not a tool with which to make one.

Let me first break my silence about the Dwimmermount project by Mr. Maliszewski. There has been a great deal of disappointment when it comes to this project, not the least of which is the dead lock the project is in due to personal circumstances. I have four things to say:

1. In my line of work, I deal with disease and death on a regular, if not daily, basis. It can be emotionally debilitating and (especially in a culture that does its best to avoid the issue at almost all cost) the grieving process is a long and difficult road. And I am not even talking about what happens to the people I council and help through this process. When it happens to one of your own (as it has with me on more than one occasion) it is devastating. As such I am more than willing to give James as much room as he needs to get through this time of his life. Speculating about if and when the project will be done is not helpful and may very well make the process of grieving that much more difficult.
2. I am a backer of the project. I took a capital risk in order to get a glimpse into a world and campaign that I have been following for years. Even if the rest of the project never sees the light of day, I have gotten my money’s worth with what has been released to backers. It is easily one of the most comprehensive and well crafted megadungeons ever to be shared with this community and I am very much looking forward to playing it one day. The material I have in hand is, frankly, exactly what I was expecting and what I paid for.
3. I consider Dwimmermount, even in its current state, to be a major success. As an experiment with OD&D as written with the basic assumption that it is not wrong, we have all had to seriously wrestle with the concept of the dungeon and the megadungeon. One meme that is making the rounds is that the first levels are “boring.” The most insightful of these meditations is by Roger of Roles, Rules & Rolls. 
4. Patience is a virtue everyone desperately needs to reacquaint themselves with.

Personally, I have only recently started to read all the material available to Dwimmermount backers, and in context of what is available I do not see the first level boring at all, but (again) I got what I was looking for. However, I do appreciate the conundrum, especially since my own attempts at a megadungeon in my Lost Colonies campaign met with mixed results.

To that end, let me call attention to a number of my older posts and bring them into the context of the long shadow of Dwimmermount:

• I did a review of Matt Finch’s Demonspore. I highly praised its modularity — it was specifically designed to be placed into an extant dungeon and not a complete dungeon in and of itself. This modularity made it possible for it to be utilized as part of my megadungeon and ended up being a highly entertaining episode in my long-running campaign. My challenge to adventure writers and publishers to duplicate this modularity has thus far fell on deaf ears.
• In my own forays into improving my craft as an adventure designer and maker of megadungeons, I came up with the idea of the 3x5 geomorph. As a concept, it duplicated the modularity found in Demonspore on a smaller scale. Each 3x5 card has more room and flexibility than a normal geomorph and each can contain its own function and backstory. The dungeon maps that I made for The Slave Pits of Abhoth used this method. I challenged folks to start working on 3x5 geomorphs, but that, too, has thus far fallen on deaf ears.
• I recently purchased another of Matt Finch’s publications, The Tome of Adventure Design. In it, with the use of dozens of tables and a lot of sound advice, Matt lays out a formalized way to utilize the very modularity that I found in his adventure Demonspore and I tried to create with my 3x5 geomorphs. You can roll on a series of tables to determine the characteristics and size of a particular section of a dungeon, including what it looks like, how many rooms, what size those rooms are and how they are arranged. There are also tables for coming up with various kinds of landmarks that differentiate this particular section of dungeon from every other part of a dungeon. In essence, the results of each of these series of die rolls is something that could theoretically fit on a 3x5 geomorph. String a bunch of these together in various patterns and one can come up with several fantastic-looking dungeons that have a suggested history and use because of all the various landmarks that dot each section of the map. Not only is it a gratifying way to build a dungeon, I believe that the end result is much better than some of the more traditional ways of putting together a dungeon.

This brings me to my current project, my re-imagined version of The Caves of Chaos from B2: The Keep on the Borderland. I used The Tome of Adventure Design heavily as I constructed my vision of the caves and the result was a series of small dungeon sections which I pieced together to come up with what I feel is and rather exciting 1st level adventure with the potential to become a megadungeon should anyone want to take it that far. No boring here.

A huge reason that I feel this way about the dungeon is the fact that simply looking at a section of the map, with a title taken from a landmark derived from a random table is truly evocative. I could run this adventure on the fly simply from looking at these maps. For example:

This map is just brimming with possibilities and could be used in all kinds of different contexts. Indeed, it is specifically designed to do exactly that.

Thus, I challenge everyone, instead of whinging about how your latest Kickstarter is behind schedule get out a pack of 3x5’s, draw some maps, label them with evocative landmarks and titles, put them out there for people to use and let us see the fruit of this re-examination of the megadungeon that Dwimmermount has so successfully and beautifully done. I pray this challenge does not fall on deaf ears.

Finally, I need to acknowledge that both James and Matt have made me a better player and a better dungeon designer. I’d like to take the time to thank them both.

Saintly Saturday: St. Artemius of Antioch

Today is the feast of St. Artemius of Antioch. During the reigns of St. Constantine the Great and his son Constantius, Artemius was a prominent military leader. When Constantius was emperor, Artemus was sent to Patras to retrieve the relics of the Apostle Andrew and to Thebes of Boetia to retrieve the relics of St. Luke. In return for these services, he was made viceroy of Egypt, where he spread and strengthened the faith.

Constantius was succeeded by Julian the Apostate (a regular character in these Saintly Saturday posts). The new emperor had rejected Christianity and wanted to restore paganism to the Empire. In his zeal, he had two bishops of Antioch tortured and killed for refusing to forsake Christ. While this persecution was taking place, Artemius arrived in Antioch and publicly denounced the emperor. This, of course, enraged the emperor and Artemius was subjected to heinous tortures and thrown into prison. Eventually, once Julian realized he was not going to change the saint's resolute mind, he had Artemius beheaded.

If seen through the lens of a D&D character career, the story of St. Artemius primarily takes place in the mid- and high levels. His quest to retrieve the relics of Sts. Andrew and Luke are akin to wilderness adventures. He had to cross the Aegean Sea in order to get to Thebes of Boetia (which is in Greece, not Egypt) and then trek across to the other side of Greece in order to get to Patras (and might even have had to cross the Gulf of Corinth). Having returned with these prizes to the emperor, his appointment as viceroy is the equivalent of building a stronghold. His conflict with Julian, then, is akin to the end game, where high level characters are dealing with larger political issues.

Though I do not spend any time on the boards, nor have I paid much attention to the play tests of Dwimmermount, I have caught wind of a level of disappointment with both the format of Mr. Maliszewski’s project and the dungeoncrawl in general.

I have to admit that I really don’t understand either of these sentiments. Dwimmermount was explicitly an experiment in doing a megadungeon cleaving as close to the rules of OD&D as possible. Due to the nature of that ruleset, this naturally requires far more creativity from the Referee and a much larger emphasis on exploration. Personally, these are exactly the two things I love about the game. As a player, some of the best sessions I have ever had involved nothing but exploring ancient ruins with nary a hint of combat. As a Ref, I love dropping hints of the backstory of why there is a megadungeon in the first place and seeing the light go on as these hints get pieced together into a greater understanding.

Of course, I have found that a successful campaign (in which I include Maliszewski’s original Dwimmermount) includes a wilderness exploration component, as looking at the life of St. Artemius through D&D glasses suggests. From personal experience, however, the key to making the megadungeon work (as opposed to a series of location-based adventures scattered across a wilderness) is to tie that wilderness exploration to the backstory of the megadungeon.

I’ll give two good examples. When Maliszewski ran Mr. Raggi’s excellent Death Frost Doom, he tied it to Dwimmermount by having the history Cyrus Maximus intertwine with the history of Dwimmermount. It added to the mystery and story of Dwimmermount. In my own Lost Colonies campaign, my players have ended up both on a spaceship and on an alien planet. The first had the Two Swords, which Dn. Goram was sent to retrieve and return to my megadungeon and the latter had a gate that led to the bowels of my megadungeon. Each of these adventures added to the mystery and backstory of my megadungeon.

In other words, the megadungeon (when used creatively) can be the backbone of every aspect of the typical D&D character's career — the initial dungeon delve, the wilderness exploration and the end game. Having personally seen this happen, it not only can make a campaign sing, but something that you want to go back to over and over again.

Azoth

Gleefully taking my own advice, one of the many ideas I have stolen from James’ Dwimmermount campaign is azoth, known to my players as liquid magic. As I have worked this week to prepare a Brain Lasher city, azoth and its origin in quintessence have played a very large role.

The first question that I asked of myself when detailing the city was: to what purpose was this city built? What was the reason Brain Lashers wanted to live here en masse? (Thus, despite the weirdness of the environment, my own tendency toward Gygaxian naturalism rears its head). The answer: azoth.

Unlike in Dwimmermount, where azoth mysteriously rained down on various planets at some point in the past, the existence of azoth in my campaign is quite deliberate. The Brain Lashers “mine” it from various suitable dimensions. It is a very laborious and slow process, but, given the powerful qualities of the end product, (especially since it is almost entirely accomplished by slave labor) they see it as quite worth their while.

I am also putting a subtle Christian spin on the story. Since Brain Lashers have a visage not unlike Cthulhu it should come as no surprise that they (knowingly or unknowingly) serve the demonic outer gods. Thus, their efforts to mine azoth from the quintessence has the negative consequence of literally tearing holes in creation — thus speeding it on its way back to the nothing from whence it came (a little Christian dogma, there).

These holes are the myriad portals my players have found in various parts of my campaign world (though they have yet to voluntarily step through one). Thus, the portal that the party expects to find in the city is actually the very place the Brain Lashers are mining azoth.

An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part 2

When I began my campaign, I had not strictly defined what any of the demi-human races were like (and had no real interest in doing so). Thus, when the first player to create a dwarf asked me what dwarves in my world were like, I told him to tell me. Because he balked at the idea, I started brainstorming ideas. The one he was most interested in was James' Dwimmermount dwarf. Though this was the genesis of dwarves in my campaign, Lost Colony dwarves differ from Dwimmermount dwarves in significant ways (they are neuters, for example) — not through my doing, but rather for things said and done by dwarf players in the campaign.

When my party found out that dwarf reproduction involved building a dwarf with the possibility of coming out with a gnome, they were intensely interested in getting a gnome for the group. They even planned to fund Ahkmed in the creation of said gnome — keep shelling out 10,000gp until a gnome came out. It was then decided that it was traditional for Dwarves only to have one son.

I reasoned that any son created after the first would have a very high chance of being a Knocker (a Chaotic Dwarf). I also reasoned that it had not always been that way. This tragic story was suggested by Mr. Raggi's module The Hammers of the God. It also suggested an origin for elfin maids bound to magical weapons.

One of the hammers of The Hammers of the God is a bane weapon — it is designed to be better against a specific kind of creature. There were also murals within the module that suggested that all of the various races of the earth had cooperated in making bane weapons in order to assure peace. This peace was destroyed by the dwarves (thus, giving a nice reason for there to be antipathy between the two races).

I figured that the dwarves (under the leadership of Mär-Rune from Raggi's module) started stealing all of the bane weapons in order to make war on all of the other races. The war that ensued so tainted the dwarven race, that they can no longer make more than one son without having that taint becoming manifest in their offspring. This war also sowed the seeds for the creation of the Sons of Cyn — but that is for another day.

Unfortunately, my players decided not to pursue the clues I had laid for them to find The Hammers — but the dungeon and all of this information has been placed into my campaign and awaits exploration.

Lost Colonies Session 21

After a long and unplanned hiatus, I finally got back in the saddle and played some Labyrinth Lord this weekend. In some ways, the hiatus worked to my group's advantage, because Hamlen's player was very close to completing a task he has been planning for quite some time — getting Grak his prosthetic arm. The extra wait actually made him even more eager to get it done.

The party had to find its way back to Headwaters, which they did after negotiating with the giant spiders they encountered at the river in the jungle they had lost themselves in. Of note, giant spiders in my world are intelligent, can speak and have a weakness for elf flesh. This, the players took advantage of and quickly got information as to the location of the "stinking rotten paladins" at Headwaters and then proceeded to feed the spider to "The Bag" as it is now referred to by the party (other wise known as the Bag of Holding with a dragon-kin inside). After re-orienting themselves, in was quite easy to follow the river into Headwaters.

Unfortunately, the town was being attacked by an small undead army of skeletons, led by a wraith and a pair of tentacled undead the party had previously encountered underneath Trisagia's city of the dead. The undead split their forces and attacked the two main strongholds of the paladins — a keep and a watchtower. Dn. Goram also spotted a small group moving towards the Church. Suspecting that the main assault by the skeletons might be a ruse, the party split up. Dn. Goram and Hamlen went to help defend the tower and keep, and the rest of the party went to the Church in order to see what was going on there.

Hamlen and Dn. Goram were able to fairly easily gut the main assault. Dn. Goram paved the way through the skeletons, automatically disrupting several a round with the help of some magic items, in order to free up his brother who charged the higher HD undead with his sword Liberator.

In the meantime, the rest of the party (minus their two highest level members) found themselves face to face with a pair of ogres and a golden masked magic user interrogating Fr. Valinor, the local priest. Afraid that they did not have the ability to go toe to toe with these three foes, they set about doing a quick strike to free Fr. Valinor and then high tail it until bigger guns could be brought to bear (I was very pleased that "run away" had finally entered the vocabulary of our younger players).

At this point I must explain an interesting quirk about this group. They have developed a very good relationship with Alidar, the local alchemist. They not only frequently buy potions from him but will bring him all kinds of oddities from their adventures in order to see if Alidar can "weaponize" them, as my players like to say. One such oddity resulted in smoke grenades which were used to confuse the ogres and the masked mage long enough to grab Fr. Valinor and run away.

The party quickly found out that the true purpose of the attack was to get the Eye of St. Gabriel and the golden mask that (unknown to the assailants) had been stolen by Xerxes (and was now, as far as the party knew, inside The Bag). The party managed to trace the attackers back in the general direction of the abandoned monastery (and the megadungeon of my campaign). The party resolved to begin a serious expedition into its depths, as soon as they could re-equip themselves and take care of a few things left hanging from sessions past (like Grak's arm).

At this point, I must explain yet another quirk about this group. They very much like the idea of henchmen and followers; however, their idea of what makes a good follower is rather unusual. Instead of hiring out normal NPCs, they have taken to adopting various NPCs and monsters that they have encountered in their adventures:

• Grak the formerly one-armed tribesman of chaotic crab-grafting humans from the Giant Insect Jungle (who is now officially a 1st level monk, using the AEC LL rules).
• A peg legged prostitute that is now going to be the main bar tender at Hamlen's tavern.
• Pups, the dire wolf who has given birth to three healthy pups.
• A camel
• The unwitting and unpredictable dragon-kin inside The Bag

Other henchman have come and gone (and died) but no emotional attachment forms, unlike the devotion the party has shown for those in the list above. Also of note, Dn. Goram wants to make a golem and has begun a search for a manual to do so and the party has taken considerable interest in helping Ahkmed in building his son.

When I began this campaign, I had not spent much time at all sketching out the Elves, Dwarves and Halflings of my world. Indeed, I left much of that work to be done by players who wished to play a demi-human. When my Dwarven player heard about James' Dwimmermount dwarves, he was really excited about the idea and ran with it. The fun part is that, although there are similarities, allowing my players freedom in creating the demi-human cultures has resulted in quite a few deviations from Dwimmermount dwarves — a big one being that Ahkmed has insisted that all dwarves are neuter and has played up his ignorance about how other races reproduce.

This past session I mentioned in passing to Ahkmed's player that I have some specific rules for how to go about creating his offspring (using a variation on the work James has done with his dwarves). The party went absolutely nuts — they especially wanted to know (ironically, given discussions on this very topic over at Grognardia) if they could specifically try to make a gnome. All of this amused Ahkmed, but he seems more focused on saving his gold for a foundation for his stronghold — a revelation that I must say was surprising. Understand, Ahkmed's player is the newest to the game (his introduction to the game was my campaign along with a 3.5 campaign that runs when mine isn't in session); however, having read the rules about dwarves, the concept of the end-game sunk in. According to the rules (his words), he is supposed to build a stronghold in order to attract dwarves "from far and wide." Thus, he is already playing for that end game — I couldn't be happier.

The session ended with a rather mundane, but productive re-exploration of the catacombs beneath the lower temple at the monastery. The party decided that they needed a much more detailed map if they were to do some serious exploring there. I was quite happy to oblige. The one significant piece of information they garnered from the new exploration is that all the bones that used to be inside these catacombs are now gone.

Lost Colonies Campaign

Recently, I have been running a Labyrinth Lord campaign with a group who primarily were introduced to D&D through 3rd edition. It has been an exercise in impromptu refereeing, on my part. I did not know what to expect, as far as a continuing campaign. As a result, I re-purposed a bunch of maps — I did not want to spend a lot of prep time on a campaign that might not last and part of me wanted to experiment with the concept. In fact, I have yet to use a map specifically created for this campaign. Interestingly, this has not hampered anyone's enjoyment of the game, and, as far as I am concerned, I've actually had more fun than I usually do as a referee.

For the curious, I am using a Judges Guild map for the campaign world, recast as a wilderness with the last vestiges of several colonies established by an empire that collapsed over a generation ago. The players began their careers in a town named after the fortress that protects it — Headwaters. It is the last stronghold of civilization, surrounded by a wilderness ruled by beings of Chaos. I placed several potential adventures, dungeons and megadungeons on the map, created a classic rumor table and had the players roll to see what their characters knew. After that, it was entirely up to them as to what they did — something they have come to really appreciate.

The area is sub-tropical and metal poor. This has put a premium on all things metallic and forced the players to be creative about how they equip their characters. More on that later. I've thoroughly enjoyed James' synopsis of his Dwimmermount campaign. In a similar vein, with an eye towards observing how 3.5 players adapt to old school play, I plan to write up my own synopsis of what I'll call the Lost Colonies campaign. Enjoy.