Death Comes Once More to the Grim North

As in everyone. Total party kill. Sounds dramatic but with only two player characters and one NPC fighter it was always on the table. 

Black Crow on a Tombstone, a cracking Satyricon track

Rufus Rose F3 and Tulip Roth T2 were in company with Lott the Humble when exploring a Ventari Reliquary to discover a chest full of cursed demon gold. For some reason throughout the session I found “reliquary” to be extremely hard to pronounce. In this instance it’s an architectural reliquary, so a dungeon.

They spoke to the half petrified four armed wolf demon but could not propose a way to lift the curse that was turning it slowly to stone; despite its offer of a boon in return if they could.

A secret door was discovered and beyond they encountered four red lesser demons with spiky dreads. After negotiations seem to have failed to get the demons to had over their chest of cursed gold, an attempt was made to kill them and take their stuff. It did not go well. 

Rufus was blinded by magic and Tulip hit with a critical in the first round. Many criticals and fumbles then ensued, and as is typical with these things a few more lucky rolls would’ve won the day for the PCs. Alas they were rendered unconscious and then eaten by demons. An ignominious end for a brave band. 

Although I forgot to mention it in game, I had rolled on the Grim Omens table at the start of the session and got “woman seen washing bloody clothing” which generally presages a violent death…

However, like good old school-ists everywhere we immediately got to rolling new characters and by the next session we will have switched from Swords&Wizardry to Crypts&Things Remastered, now with a Sorcerer and a Thief. 

Under new rules, the Grim North awaits. 

More Clearing the Shelves

Once upon a time I embarked on a quest to play all the games I had bought but never used. I even made a blog post about it: Clearing the Shelves

However, I did not clear the shelves. Things came up. Recently though I find myself running two game nights a week. One for WFRP 2e and one for the Grim North (it’s on Thursday, drop in style, you should play.)

It occurred to me last week that WFRP 2e was a shelf game. Another one ticked off the list (except I added two to the list by buying Basic Fantasy RPG and Classic Traveller, neither of which have seen the table.)

The 1st edition cover is better

So of the original list I’ve run: Warlock! Through Sunken Lands and WFRP 2e. All which proved to be excellent and campaign worthy games. Through Sunken Lands I’ve actually run twice with two different groups. In order to tick off another game I plan to convert the Grim North to Crypts and Things Remastered. At least temporarily. That sounds grander than it is given C&T is a Swords&Wizardry based game and I already use the Complete version of that system for the campaign. I’m interested to see how it works out. C&T is explicitly designed to be more pulp sword and sorcery than most retro clones; so the characters are a bit more robust and mechanically capable than your average S&W PC. 

All this does lead me to think about the possibility of turning more shelf games into table games. Some of those games are beasts though. Runequest. Empire of the Petal Throne. Traveller. The One Ring. All games I think are suited to longer form play, or at least I would want to run them out for more than a one shot to really get the full experience. 

Essentially there’s no rush, it’s all play and should all be good fun. 

Molemen Attack! But Why?

 

Fighting back against years of Surface Dweller oppression 

The GM’s Five Minutes is a long established tradition for when the players go in an unexpected direction. As in “Give me five minutes to figure out what’s happening and we’ll continue.” A powerful tool in the sandbox style you should probably be using for your games. Of course everyone knows that their GM, no matter how good they are, cannot prepare for every possible avenue of player ingenuity (nor should they try.)  We all buy into the illusion that is not the case though so when the GM uses some weak subterfuge such as a sudden and unscheduled bathroom break we can all pretend we don’t know they’re locked in there, looking at pages of now irrelevant notes, going “What the fuck am I going to do now?” And we all know that’s fine.

And if you can’t think of the answer then there’s always the oldest trick in the book: Orcs attack! That’s how Gary did it, probably Dave too, even Tolkien flagged for ideas at times. That’s fine too. Thinking time is created while the PCs deal with whatever generic omnipresent threat is on the warpath right now. Of course it may be that it’s not orcs and probably better if it isn’t. The more mystery we can engender with our stop gap time filler the more the game will progress. So if we can work out why the attack takes place or what is left behind that gives the players something to investigate then that’s probably better. 

Is there anyone I haven’t told that the Grim North doesn’t have orcs? Ok, good. So in those Grim moments molemen attack. Molemen are burrowers, there is an almost unlimited amount of them lurking under the cities and wildernesses of the North; and they hate you and want to devour your flesh. They can spring up practically anywhere, which is convenient if you  are Grim North GM with time on your hands and no idea what to do with it.

For some reason these are d7 tables, I must have in a deep DCC phase when I wrote them but none the less, sharp eyed readers will recognise the format stolen from the Black Hack

Mole Man Activities

1. Feasting on fresh corpses
2. Performing incomprehensible ritual
3. Carrying out undermining operations 
4. Kidnapping surface dwellers of import
5. Scouting for large scale mole assault
6. Searching for escaped flesh crafting experiment
7. Setting ambush for someone else

With.....

1. Renegade Patrician
2. Pack of mole dogs 
3. Near Seer
4. Ancient buried artefact
5. Crudely made human masks
6. Overwhelming smell of decay
7. Mankiller Molehemoth

Champions of the Battlepits

As mentioned previously it is possible to hire a champion to represent you in the Battlepits. Fortunately for the prospective employer, Citadel Minatures produced this handy of catalogue of appropriate candidates back in the ‘80s…

Canonical list of Grim North Battlepits Champions 

So if you’re in legal trouble, and you can find them, you can hire PAPWORTH ORGANGRINDER! Quite honestly, I don’t know why you wouldn’t. 

The Battlepits…

Recently a small group of PCs entered the Battlepits of Nox Aeterna for the first time in the history of the Grim North. Following the disastrous Clam-Slakeheart wedding; one of the few survivors, a certain Graydon Slakeheart, has taken out legal proceedings against Tulip and Rufus. They can’t afford the weregild so they’ve set out to prove their innocence and hopefully entertain the crowds in The Grim North’s version of court tv. 

The Battlepits (tip of the hat to the Bloodsword books, naturally) are the judicial arena of the city. Those accused of crimes can face a variety of different disciplines in order to prove their innocence. This can range from the simple but popular “man vs. wolves” to the considerably more complex “dungeoneering.”  

In terms of determining guilt or innocence man vs wolves is fairly straightforward; if you get chewed to death by wolves then you’re guilty. Justice is done. 

Preoceedings can be made more complex and or entertaining by manipulating the environment. Man vs wolves but we’re on a moving platform suspended over a pit of spikes, for example. Or man vs strange beast from the wilderness. In fact the business in supplying strange beasts from the wilderness is allegedly very lucrative and the sort of thing player characters could easily get involved in. 

Similarly, the introduction of prosecutors can influence matters. Hired by the plaintiffs these are effectively gladiators that fight on behalf of the wealthy so they don’t have to present themselves to actual physical danger. Additionally It is permitted for slaves to represent their owners, potentially earning their freedom If victorious. The time honoured tradition of using a noble excuse for thoroughly reprehensible behaviour. 

So Tulip and Rufus are faced with the Battlepits event du jour: “Dungeoneering.” An artificial enclosed environment of rooms and corridors is created, open at the top so the crowd of bloodthirsty spectators can observe, and the PCs are unleashed. Their goal, find the Emblem of Innocence. The obstacles are mostly traps and puzzles. Also Slakeheart hired a prosecutor to impeed their progress, i.e.kill them, the impressively armoured Ergot Vile Groundshaker.

The Grim Binder

My GM binder for the Grim North is a fairly recent  development. I have always previously worked from notes on my iPad but I was finding it a bit difficult to navigate in a hurry and wanted something that was: A) Easy to reference and B) A bit more permanent. 

There are some random tables that I use all the time and don’t change much in terms of contents so it made sense to start with them and see what needs develop from play. 

So I took an old A4 ring binder and printed some stuff out to stick in there. I’m using plastic sleeves to contain the print out and trying to keep them in some sort of logical order. Failing that, one that makes sense to me. 

The current contents are:

• General Encounters of the Grim North (and what are they up to?)
• So you need a Grim North Adventure in a Hurry?
• What do we Want?
• Where is Tonight’s Ill Advised Escapade Taking Place?
• What’s Complicating Tonight’s Grim North Session
• The Random District Table
• Cults of the Grim North 
• Thieves Crews
• Random Thieves Crew Activites
• Table of Random Contacts
• Random Patrician Names (and associated mental illnesses)
•  Critical and Fumble Tables (very much a work in progress)
• In the Possession of the formerly alive NPC…
• Guilds of the City
• Tavern Generator
• Random Grog Table (important due to Conan’s rule)
• Grim Omens
• Breachers from the Outer Dark/Farthest Black
• Weird Occurrence Table
• Random Portal Destinations 
• What’s on Sale at the Purveyor of Unusual Wares
• Who’s in at the House of Mercenaries, Sellspears and Blades for Hire?

Ideally I’ll add a page for each District of the city, complete with its specific random encounters, and likewise for regions outside of town and I have a big generator for random Gloom locations and events that I need to get around to printing too.

I could die without ever having to hear how you got into RPGs

Podcasters take note. 

So, irony storm inbound. It’s not some story about how my older brother had the books or whatever. 

There was no mentor. Just some confusion about what a book was. It wasn’t a choose your own adventure book. Or it was but not in the way I thought. Dragon Warriors. Cheers Dave and Oliver. I’ll probably never recapture the magic of reading that book.

Without my younger sister none of this would have been possible. She was the first player in every game. Dragon Warriors. Marvel Superheroes. DnD. None of it would’ve happened if she hadn’t played. She’s not big into fantasy, I don’t know that she’s even read a comic all the way through. These days I think her favourite Netflix show is Emily in Paris. Not renowned for its roleplaying potential. However if she she hadn’t been the First Barbarian, been Captain Marvel (the Monica Rambeau one,) or bashed the baddies as She Hulk, been Kara the Cleric; I don’t even know if I’d have got this thing off the ground.

So my RPG origin story isn’t one of someone introducing me to the game but of the person who came along for the ride whether she was super into it or not.

Thanks, the Baby, couldn’t have done any of this without you.