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

Setting Appropriate Random Tables

These are worth their weight in the precious metal of your choice. In order for an entry on a random table to have significant value it must be something that the GM couldn’t just make up on the spot. So if entry 23 on your Open Country encounter table is “2d6 Peasants,” it’s not working hard enough. 

The way the Black Hack handles this is interesting, and I expect it’s not the only example of this. It gives each monster entry two small (d6) tables of what they’re doing and what with. See Banished Elves above. This way we’re not just getting “2d6 Banished Elves, fight ‘em” as a result. You could argue that the old school reaction roll helps add variety to general tables and I would agree and wholeheartedly encourage you to use them. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, sometimes you need something general but random in order to introduce an element of chaos (with a small c) into your highly structured plan for this evening’s fun. If high structure fun is your and your group’s bag. I always roll on my “What’s Complicating Tonight’s Grim North Session?” table for this very reason. And despite my preference for more detailed and setting relevant results in general, this is just a big list of potential antagonists. This works for me in that it often throws in an unforeseen or incongruent yet possible wrinkle into a session or scenario. The advantage here being that it can be easy to get drawn into George RR Martin thinking when quickly crafting hooks and scenarios.  By this I mean too thematic. When travelling George’s Seven Kingdoms you will often encounter the Fisher Folk who are ruled by the Fish King and sit upon the Cod-bone Throne or whatever. This sort of theming is useful in differentiating between lots of what would be otherwise broadly similar places. Indeed the Districts of Nox Aeterna are themed in this way for that exact reason.  However, if we’re stealing a minority religious item from a cult and there are other thieves, other cults and the Watch involved then that’s fine but it’s all a bit obvious. If we roll on our random complication table and the mysterious Lamprey Men are now in the mix then we’ve got to get creative and that’s where the adventure is. 

If we look at a more specific example from my setting, each District of the city has a short random encounter table. They’re usually just a d6 but the encounters on them are relevant to that location in some way that I don’t have to just make up on the spot. So generally if I roll that table I get something specific to the region of the city the PCs are travelling through without having to really reference any deeper notes on the area; and it’s automatically congruent with that District and it’s inhabitants. In this instance when I create entries for these tables they include the activity taking place. So for instance if we consider this entry for Rivershore, a gentrified former fishing locale now popular with hipsters: 

1. Earnest youths seeking monthly charitable donations for blind, mute, plague ridden orphans

So yes, they’re beggars but more in the vein of the modern tabard wearing charity muggers that accost you in London claiming to want just a minute of your time (and of course a monthly direct debit from which their commission is generated.) It’s not creative genius but it’s definitely better than “2d4 beggars,” and that is sufficient for these purposes. 

The Black Sword of Shem

So, the wise and powerful Brian Wille has written this cool introductory Sword & Sorcery scenario for The Black Hack, set in the Hyborean Age of Conan. Click on the link below to get your hands on it for everyone’s favourite price of free:

The Black Sword of Shem

Kill, your enemies, see them driven before you, gather up all their magic items and experience points.

The Black Hack: More of a Love Letter than a Review

For those who don’t know: The Black Hack (available here) is a rules light old school D&D inspired game that uses a simple roll under your stat resolution mechanic and is focused on player rolls. Now on its second edition. Examples you say? You try to hit the goblin? Roll under your Strength. You want to dodge the blow dart? Roll under your Dexterity. It’s pretty straightforward. This simplicity at the heart of the game is its strength. You’re never going to get a simulationist experience playing this way and if you prefer complex machanics then this is not your bag. However this game has spawned a thousand hacks in all sorts of genres, the simplicity of the rules making it extremely versatile. You can do anything with this mechanic, as long as it’s simple. I mean you could say the same of any mechanic really but you only have to search DriveThru RPG to see how this ruleset has captured the imagination of independent games designers. I mean with such a proliferation of hacks the quality is wildly variable but some of them are even playtested, which is nice, and rather good.

Even the cover is a die drop table of weird shit

So at this point I should probably add the disclaimer that I know David Black. For it is his brainchild that I am writing about. When I say I know him, I mean to the extent that he’s played in some of my online games, that we hang out and play games at Dragonmeet, and that he patiently listens while I bitch and whinge about people I don’t really know except from their blogs and so forth. I was also once mistaken for him while I was running a game in the bar at Dragonmeet, my only claim to roleplaying fame.

The 1st edition rules are all you need to play the game. Indeed I used to keep a copy in my backpack so; that along with some paper, pencils and a dice roller on my phone; I was table ready at any time should the opportunity arise for a game of some sort. I have introduced numerous new players to the hobby because of this. The Black Hack uses slightly different mechanics to old school/retro forms of D&D but is backwards compatible because things like hit dice and spells still have meaning in TBH rules. You can easily convert the module of your choice on the fly if you wish.

There is now a second edition of the game. It contains some rules tweaks, a bestiary and shed loads of GM tools (generally in the form of random tables.) This now truly is all you need for the table. Plus, it’s good. The first thing I saw in the book that I instantly loved was the what are the monsters doing when you encounter them tables. In the bestiary each monster entry has two 1d6 tables that combine you give what the bad guys are up to, should you randomly encounter them for instance. So if I encounter pig faced or men I roll a 3 and a 5 to discover they are (3) drunkenly bickering over... (5) ...1d12 left boots. Nice. Plus it comes with this cool Sean Poppe illustration...

Give us your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle. Mostly your boots though, and only the left ones at that.

In addition to this I get random tables for dungeons, for wilderness adventures, NPCs, adventure hooks, traps, poisons, magic stuff, treasure, and some tasty GM tips too. It looks great too.

Can it all be positive? I mean, no. When your rules are this light there are going to be cases they just don’t cover. Player vs player is one that seems to constantly come up on social media discussions (admittedly it’s mostly theoretical questions I see rather than an actual problem from play.) There are always going to be people who aren’t comfortable making things up, prefer a definitive word of god answer. As the GM I miss rolling dice (except for damage, *insert evil laugh*) and PCs can eat up old school modules as Black Hack PCs at lower levels are generally more powerful than their B/X equivalent, for instance. The answer to all this is as simple as you can change stuff you don’t like. A simple rules framework means it is easy to modify without ruining everyone’s fun. Hence all those hacks of it I guess.

I’ve used this game to run either impromptu fantasy games or sword & planet games, combining TBH with Warriors of the Red Planet in my Warriors of the Black Planet games. It’s worked out great and I’ve enjoyed myself thoroughly. I’ve only been a player in a Black Hack game once, and back then it only existed as a handful of sheets of paper that Dave had printed out and brought with him to Dragonmeet. He ended up running it in the bar using Barrowmaze, which he’d bought an hour beforehand along with some hideous, green, neon dice. It went smoothly and I knew then that the game was going to be good.

Now my kickstarter 2nd edition has arrived in a sleek black box and its fucking cool.

Warriors Of the Black Planet [Actual Play]

It's all a bit grim actually

The Black Planet of Acheron, where the only God is Death...

The player characters were Bronze kin, natives of the Acherontic city of Charron, on a mission to locate an abandoned atmosphere station somewhere in the wilderness outside their city. Their flier was forced to crash land after the anti-grav tanks were pierced by a sniper's bullet. 

The crash site was attacked by a group of the Unliving; a shambling, moaning affront to Death Herself. They were returned to the embrace of the goddess by accurate fire from the PCs' radium rifles followed by lethal sword work up close.

Reasoning that as atmosphere stations they knew existed were concealed to protect them from the destructive impulses of the Jade Kin, the place they sought would be most likely hidden somewhere in the mountains to the North of the crash site. 

As best they could determine, the sniper's bullet had originated from the strange forest of thorns to the West so they avoided that and headed toward the mountains. They ignored a ruined city to the South and an open plain to the East.

They discovered some copper tablets engraved with strange hieroglyphs that they identified as the written language of the Golden Kin, who claim to be beloved of Death and hold themselves above all others. They could not however read the ancient, pictorial script.

Upon discovering the partially buried towers of a ruined structure, the threat of a storm drove the party underground. They explored a subterranean complex, uncovering devices of weird science, before tampering with the control panel of some shaft based mechanism that seemingly activated a destructive process. Now. trying to escape from the facility, they entered a room that contained two pods. One of these housed a male Silver Kin in apparent suspended animation.

This planet is similar but redder

They got themselves safely on the other side of a set of blast doors, the party's warrior rescuing the Silver Kin from his pod, should the place be about to explode. Now in a cave they discovered a strange statue, believing it to be a blasphemous image they destroyed the idol. This however drew the attention of an eyeless, white horror with sinuous limbs and a mouthful of needle like teeth. They closed in it and cut it to pieces in short order despite the warrior's shield being smashed into a thousand fragments.

They looted equipment from the bodies of the creature's Jade Kin victims and made their way back to the surface. 

There they encountered a large group of Jade Kin apparently arguing amongst themselves at the base of the towers. Deciding discretion was the better part of valour, they skirted around them and made their way to the foot of the mountains of black glass. 

They chose to explore a canyon that led them to some form of temple entrance carved into the very rock itself. It was guarded by two large stainless steel statues. Inside they discovered an arena of sorts, their Silver Kin companion explained the altar they found there was where the losers of duels sacrificed themselves to the Goddess....

Run using, not powered by, The Black Hack

And there we ran out of time. I'm planning to discuss the mechanics of running the game in a second post but given it was my first time out with The Black Hack, and was for many of the players, it all ran very smoothly indeed.

Dragonmeet 2015

My first con.

I had met up with Mick Reddick and David Black for some breakfast prior to arriving at the con. There was no skulduggery involved in our entrance to the venue, none at all. No sir.

Mick Reddick knows absolutely fucking everyone. Not a joke. He couldn't go five feet or drink a cup of tea without bumping into some gamer buddy or other.

I bought nothing. I have to admit I was a bit bewildered by the trade floor. There was so much stuff on offer but basically nothing I wanted or didn't already own. I'm not a collector of rpg stuff, I like things I can use and when I own things I haven't used they gnaw at me... Mick bought some Lamentations of the Flame Princess stuff to round out his collection and Dave bought Stonehell, which he already had as a PDF but wanted a book of, and some ugly neon dice to play his Hivelife 1979 retro future D&D hack with.

Then we headed up to the bar to set up for some games. I ran a Grim North session with Oli Palmer, Kathryn Jenkins, Rachel Tew and Rachel's other half Andy. Rachel and Oli have played in the a Grim North before via hangouts and it was nice to meet up face to face and throw down in a tale of one man and his potentially evil beard. We didn't get to resolve the session due to time constraints. As is fairly normal for me I rambled aimlessly along and we finished up with the players looking to sacrifice a chicken in order to carry out some sort of divination on the evil beard while its owner was kept in a state of near constant inebriation by wine toting slaves. Good times.

With too many players for one game Mick had recruited enough random passers by to make up two games and Dave stepped up to run his rag tag bunch of plucky misfits through Stonehell using his streamlined retro clone Black Hack. I ran Mick's fighter for about 45 minutes while both Stonehell and Black Hack proved their worth. David is clearly cool with GMing a game with zero prep and his Black Hack system runs really smooth and easy. Stonehell is a great resource and it was handled well. Everyone at the table was having a great time, even if I nearly got Mick's character killed at the end. Still, what's a bit of crippling between friends?

Things I learned. David Black both writes and runs a good game. Seek out his work and enjoy it. He runs games via G+ UK OSR Hangouts community. His Black Hack rule set is available for free on the internet. Mick Reddick is a force of gaming nature, when a man says "I'll just nip downstairs and get two more players" even at a gaming convention I don't expect him to be back inside of two minutes! And last but not least the UK OSR Hangouts Community is a great place, filled with lovely people who I have thoroughly enjoyed gaming with so far, and long may it continue.

I'm going to write a quick session report for the Grim North game tomorrow.