Telling stories to cats (back online)

And what happened next to the Brave Little Kitten?

Comment - Campaign Setting

A setting, a campaign, even a single pick-up game is only as good as the DM.

There is no formula, no diagram, no mythos, not a damn thing that can make a setting good on its own. A good DM can make a bad setting good, can take a piece of crap published module and make it fun. It is a god-damn art. It isn't the setting that can get you into the game, that can keep a campaign going for weeks, months or even years, that can stir your imagination and make you feel the gold coins slipping through your fingers or startle the crap out of you when your character turns a corner, or makes you shout when you chop down that last beastie just before it takes your character down. A good DM does that.

Part II

My point is that there is no setting fluff that makes a campaign golden.

I detest Planescape, others love it. Greyhawk is my favorite published setting others have no time for it.

Setting fluff is subjective. You can have rivers that flow uphill, you can run into WWII German infantry attacking dinosaurs controlled from outerspace with a tree full of keebler elves on the side and it can be a fantastic game.

Or it can be a horrible game if the DM sucks. The DM is the setting. He breaths life into the words of a published world, he makes paper lions roar and unsheath their claws, he takes his imagination and becomes everything, the split in the player's backpack that rips while he is being chased by those paper lions, the rotting boards of the bridge the player runs across, swaying back and forth over a black and bottomless pit, the fraying rope, the feathered lizard creatures with spears that rush the player from the other side as the lions wait for their dinner to return. The DM is the town where the player rested, the kingdom the town resided in, the tribe of Ogres or clan of Giants, the number of coins stuck to the chest of the sleeping dragon.

There are no elements, no fluff, no story-line, that universally make a flavoursome campaign setting. The flavor comes from the chef, the DM and nowhere else. He can take your favorite steak and burn it beyond recognition or make it the so good your mouth waters at the thought of it.

All that you can do here is make a list of recipes that other people have enjoyed. A good chef, a good DM will know what to do with them. Use them, change them, maybe ignore them, but all you really need is that good chef.

Comment - Searching the Room - Part 2

DM: As you begin your search you hear a clicking sound from the hall.

Ted (the thief): What the hell is that?

Clarence (the cleric): Is the door still open?

Mike (the magic-user): Shit!

Frank (the fighter): I'll check it! Back me up!

DM: As you approach the open door you can hear the clicking sound again. It sounds like two pieces of wood hitting each other.

Ted: What the F...!

Frank: I have my longsword of painful blisters ready.

DM: What do you do?

Frank: I edge against the wall and take a glance out, left and right , real quick.

DM: In the glowing orange-tinted light of your sword you don't see anything, but as you pull your head back you hear the click again. It sounds very close.

Ted: We are screwed man! They're coming outta the F...ing walls!

Clarence: Shut-up Ted!

Mike: I take out my powder of Dis-invisability and prepare to use a dose of it.

DM: Are you going out in the hall?

Mike: I will jump out and send the powder to the left and right in the hall.

DM: Roll when you jump out.

Mike: An '18".

Frank: I'm ready to attack!

DM: The powder swirls from Mike's palm and spreads in a pink shower up to the ceiling and down to the floor flowing right and left like the edge of a rainstorm.

Frank: I jump out into the hall!

Clarence: I have my mace in hand and I'm right at the door.

Ted: I have my sling out and I'm back up against the wall opposite the door.

DM: The powder has settled across 30 feet of floor, fifteen feet to either side. Frank you see nothing.

Frank and Mike: What!

DM: Suddenly the clicking sound comes again as loud as if it was right in the room with you. All of you can see the small cricket near Frank's left foot.

Frank: You bastard!

DM: Are you still searching the room?

Comment - Searching a Room

If you ever read Knights of the Dinner Table you can find examples of play exactly like that, where the DM just hands them a list of what was in the room and the players transfer it to their character sheets.

I like the right kind of detail in my game and try to tailor such searches to my players' temperament for detail. If a character makes such a blanket statement I usually slow things down ask for details. How much time are they going to take searching, do they trust the the other players not to pocket a few shiny bits of treasure, are there traps, etc...

DM: "The wizard's apprentice inhabiting this room is dead and his homunculous familiar as well. What a mess."

Thief 1 (Ted): "I thoroughly search the room!"

DM: "Okay, it is a long room running south; about forty feet and twenty feet wide, but it looks like it might turn east at the end. Where do you start searching?"

Fighter 1 (Frank): "Not so fast thief-boy! I'm going with you. Last time you searched you palmed that ring of spices."

Cleric 1 (Clarence): "That's right! Keep an eye him Frank. I'm going to shut the door. Who needs healing?"

Mage 1 (Mike): "I do. That bastard used a Magic Missile on me!"

DM: "Just as a point of interest the bookcase against the wall is still smoldering from Mike's Burning Hands, but most of the flames were put out by all the blood after Frank chopped the wizard's head off. (Nice called shot there).

Mike: "The Bookcase! Healing can wait. I put out the burning books and search it!"

Ted: "Hey, I'm searching the room!"

Mike: "Not this bookcase you aren't!"

DM: "How are you putting the flames out. And where exactly are you guys searching?"

Ted: "Okay he can have the charred books. What does this place look like?"

DM: (Finally!) As I said when you opened the door, the wizard was sitting at a table, now knocked over with two of the legs broken. There were 3 chairs around it, now knocked over as well. A long bookcase is against the west wall behind him running about 15 feet. There is a sideboard against the north wall, with a strange picture above it and the door opened in the east wall. The room runs south another twenty or thirty feet with another bookcase at its end and three pieces of furniture and a desk on the east and west walls. There appears to be a gap at the end of the east wall where the room seems to run east. A cloak rack is near the door.

Ted: "Sheesh! What are you doin'; writing a novel?"

DM: "Hey, you want to thoroughly search the place. This is what you have to search."

Frank: "What's that picture look like?"

Wormy's World - Characters - Wes - 31

Wormy's World - Characters - Wes - 31

Wes

While playing a game of chess Butch and Wes are approached by a pair of giant red ogres (Otus and Rudy. Butch speaks up and almost gets smashed by Otus' ball and chain while Wes runs for the cave. When the Ogres come back Wes is all for letting things simmer down while they finish their game, but Butch kicks over the board and wants to find the Ogre's gold while Wes tries to catch the falling pieces of the game he was winning.

Lost Library of Q'Sh - Tradesman's Entrance - Part 1

Lost Library of Q'Sh - Tradesman's Entrance

Part 1

The area around the Lost Library of Q'Sh is wilderness with the once nearby towns and villages long abandoned and swallowed by forest. The road to and from the library was once wide, well paved and maintained but the trees have claimed the once open track as they have claimed worked fields and town squares. Time and the elements and the gnawing roots of trees have not been kind to the works of man.

The library itself was made of sterner stuff, carved from a wide plateau of rock and descending untold depths into the earth, the work was at the hands of dwarven craftsmen, miners and masons; built as a repository of knowledge for the ages not just the life of a man or even a civilization.

If only those protecting the library had been as enduring as stone.

The Tradesman's Entrance -

The Forest

The area surrounding the Tradesman's entrance to the library is in a long narrow, heavily-wooded valley. The roadway that once marched evenly down the valley floor, raised above a fast flowing stream, has long since disappeared and the stream is now the only direct path to the wide southern gateway.

The valley forest is strangely empty of any large animal life except for a pair of giant-weasels that hunt by day and a patrol of kobolds who check their traps for small game by night.

If the players approach by day they may discover the tracks of a brown bear leading into the valley. A fresh trail can be found broken through the underbrush and in a small clearing near a recently uprooted tree is the scene of a desperate battle. A large brown bear lies dead atop the body of a giant-weasel. A second weasel is tangled amid the roots of the upturned tree. A small 1hp brown bear cub sits forlornly by its mother's body while the body of a dead cub is resting where the weasel dropped it; in the deep depression left by the roots of the tree.

The bear cub is very young and will bond with anyone feeding it. If abandoned the cub will attempt to follow the party. If cared for the cub could become a faithful animal companion, but keeping it alive as it is a 1HP AC9 creature could prove challenging.

The Stream

Once an icy-cold and fast flowing water that ran beside the raised roadway; the valley stream has become a slow and shallow flow of water skirting tumbled rocks as it leads toward the southern entrance of the library. To the west the valley wall rises higher as the water flows south ending in the pool at Area 1). before curving along the outer wall heading east and disappearing into a crevice and into the dungeons below.

Movement along the stream is not difficult but the bed is filled with loose stone and combat for anyone standing in the stream-bed is at -1 to hit.

The east forested bank of the stream is about ten-feet above the shallow water. During the spring storms flood waters will raise the stream from mere inches to a height that will easily overflow the ten-foot banks. The bank has been worn down in several places where kobolds have beaten down animal paths that reached the stream.

If the valley is entered at night there is a chance of encountering the kobold patrol or the group gathering small prey from their series of traps. (During the day it is possible to find the kobolds' traps which are simple wire snares).

A. Patrol

The kobold patrol consists of one sub-leader of 4hp AC5 (suit of homemade leather armor) armed with a barbed throwing spear dmg 1d4 (+ 1hp dmg to remove unless save under Dex is made) and a dagger he uses as a short sword dmg 1d4+1 (due to strength).

8 2hp AC7 kobolds armed with 1d4 damage stabbing spears.

The leader has a small belt pouch with a round gold sphere (if examined it will be revealed as the head of a small statue that radiates magic faintly).

The Trap Gatherers.

The trap gatherers consist of 12 kobolds that will split off into six groups of two. One kobold will be 2hp AC7 the other 1hp. The 2hp kobold has a stabbing spear 1d4 dmg and the other kobold is unarmed and will run away if attacked (or if any strangers are encountered). If forced to fight the 1hp kobolds can only inflict 1hp dmg.

Raising the Alarm

Both the Patrol and the Trap Gathers will try to race back to their warrens (1a-1e) and raise the alarm about intruders rather than to stay and fight. If a single adventurer is encountered the Patrol leader might try to swarm them but will still send one member of his patrol back to the warrens. 

Lone Wolf - A Solitary Journey - Book 2 - Fire on the Water

Lone Wolf - A Solitary Journey 

Book 2 - Fire on the Water

After surviving Book 1 - Flight from the Dark with 2 character deaths I managed to rack up 3 more before rolling to a glorious finish with Lone Wolf the 6th. My natural inclinations are not a good survival choice I find and there are a number of ways to walk into a situation your stats can't pull you out of (either through combat with a monster way above your paygrade or just instant death).

These books are great for replay value. I have about exhausted Book 1 after three runs through it. While you learn to avoid certain of the instant death trails as you follow one numbered paragraph to another part of surviving the game involves knowing which Kai Abilities to choose. I neglected healing with my first character in book one and found that to be a terrible blunder.  Part of survival depends on your Combat Skill and Endurance, but CS is the most important of the two. My characters with 12 and 13 CS just couldn't cut it and died in combat encounters a higher stat'd character would have walked away from. All part of the game and really, the risk of character death enriches the experience.

Fire on the Water and Flight from the Dark are both quest adventures and a great deal of the charm of the books comes from the interesting glimpses, brought to life with Gary Chalk's fantastic illustrations,  of the game setting as you make your way through,  The books are a quiet bit of fun broken by an occasional bout of swearing and a cheer when you overcome an opponent.

There is a bit more of the random rolling in Fire on the Water, at least more that I encountered than had been in Book 1, and it was a welcome addition to the straightforward solo game system. There is some replay value but the book can only cover so many possibilities. It cries out to be turned into an RPG and a series of adventures based on the solo books.