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.

The King Under the Forest, part two

I mentioned previously that this was the first adventure I ever ran, back when I was eight years old and new to RPGs. I recently had occasion to do so again...

I was at Dragonmeet, London’s largest RPG convention, in December 2018 and ran some off the books gaming for a group of crusty old European Grognards. With virtually no prep, no change there, I ran King Under the Forest using Dragon Warriors Rules As Written. In my current DW game, which runs about once monthly via Hangouts, I have some slight modifications to the by the book method. However here I wanted to see the system in all its original glory. So characters were rolled, 3d6 down the line as Gygax intended and I declared I would be reading the boxed text aloud verbatim. The latter to provide the authentic 1980s adventure experience but also I thought it would be interesting, seen through the eyes of modern gamers.

No such thing as too many swords

I have no wish to enter the Great Read Aloud Text Debate however it did lead to, for me, an interesting exchange:

GM “You pause and hold your breath as you study the outline of the shadow...”
Player “No, I don’t. I breathe heavily.”

Here and in some of the other passages the adventure shows it’s gamebook heritage (“will you climb? Or turn back?”) but then the designers also wrote some very successful gamebooks and in designing an introductory RPG for sale in bookshops (I got five out six books in WH Smith) rather than Games Workshops I can only assume that this was a deliberate design choice.

Of course running an intro adventure for genre savvy grognards means that they’re probably going to eat it up without too much drama and that was certainly the case here. There is a nice encounter with some warriors who materialise out of a tapestry with “faces the colour of old cloth.”  This is mechanically quite tough as a straightforward fight but instantly I was told “I burn the tapestry.” The Tapestry Warriors burst into flames and disappear with a ghostly howl.

Similarly the other puzzles were solved without too much drama and this is a strength of the adventure that the difficulty is sufficient that they require some thought but are not ridiculously taxing.

Overall it was a good time and although there was some eye rolling at some of the read aloud bits, the players seemed to enjoy it too. There are some really nice touches in this adventure that hint at the greater myth of Vallander, the King Under the Forest, without beating you over the head with it. There are some parts that seem a little jarring, the gorgon encounter for instance (although this has received some treatment in the re-issue version in the Sleeping Gods book) and the obligatory giant spider...

I’d like to redo this adventure building on the original framework and taylor is it to my own vision of what Vallander’s tomb would be like in my version of Legend. Perhaps more on that later.

The King Under the Forest, part one

In which I shall ramble about Dragon Warriors....

I hold in my hand an ingot of purest old school RPG

I bought Dragon Warriors pretty much by accident. We had this mail order book thing at school and occasionally they did Choose Your Own Adventure or Fighting Fantasy books. I read the blurb for this and thought that it sounded like the best Fighting Fantasy book ever. Of course I was wrong. It was better than that.

I played it with my school friends and my sister and anyone who would sit still long enough to listen. I was eight and this was the best thing ever.

The first proper adventure I ran was the one at the back of the book, naturally. The King Under the Forest. Wherein the PCs meet a priest with an ancient map that shows the location of the Tomb of Vallander, a King Arthur figure. While there is no setting information in this book, the adventure sets the tone (along with the monsters chapter, tons of great flavour there.) This is early medieval England but the beliefs of folklore are real. The setting would be greatly expanded on in Book 6: The Lands of Legend.

Uh-oh, this looks bad....

For all that it has a cool dragon encounter (for 1st Rank novices!) it’s a fairly straightforward underworld crawl. For some reason, probably product identity, dungeons are called underworlds in Dragon Warriors. I like it. There are some puzzles and some fights. It’s pretty linear but it’s meant to introduce beginning players and GMs to the game so a lack of complexity is a design feature. However it’s grown up enough to have a slightly downbeat ending. This is a fairly common theme for games set in Legend, as the Dragon Warriors world is known.

So, this is a good introduction to the game in my opinion, at least in principal. In execution, well I ran it recently and it shows its age a little but it was still a good time. I think that tapping into the well established folklore of the Arthur myth is a smart move and if you were encountering Dragon Warriors for the first time then this is a good place to start.

From the Ashes

Facing a G+less future like “Come at me bro” by John Howe

Google plus is winding down. The end is nigh. The 2nd of April to be exact. A vibrant and productive community of RPG people will vanish Kaiser Soze-like into the diaspora of the Internet. I mean there’s talk of getting the blogs going again and there’s the MeWe migration... but it’s not the same. It might be but right now there’s just uncertainty. Much of what was posted to G+ will be lost and while there’s no certainty that blogger will be around in the future either, for now it seems like this might be a good place to post my thoughts on games.

What will those thoughts entail, I hear no one ask? Well, lately I’ve been all about Dragon Warriors, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition and maybe some OSR style D&D. I mean I played in a game of B/X Essentials, which was nice. I posted to G+ that in 2019 I was going to step away from the comfortable blanket of Swords & Wizardry and Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Instead I shall focus on Dragon Warriors (and general Legend based roleplaying,) WFRP and should the opportunity arise TSR Marvel Superheroes and D6 Star Wars.

Now I’ve recruited all the players for my online Hangouts games from G+ so it remains to be seen how getting new games going will manifest. However, my Dragon Warriors campaign, “While the Gods Sleep”, continues on an aspirational monthly schedule and I’ve run one session of WFRP that’s the first of a mini campaign (I say that, the DW game is an unresolved oneshot now nearing its 30th session) I’ve called “All Wool and A Yard Wide.” So prospects don’t look too shabby.

Jeff’s 20 questions: Grim North Edition

What do you mean it's not obvious where the alchemist's shop is?

1. What is the deal with my cleric's religion? The Grim North does not have clerics. The cleric is redefined as the mystic, who’s powers are psychic rather than divine.
2. Where can we go to buy standard equipment? All over the place. Nox Aeterna has a wealth of useful outlets.
3. Where can we go to get platemail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended? You’d have to ask around. It can be done, no question, you just need to find a guy.
4. Who is the mightiest wizard in the land? Hard to say. If they weren’t both dead, probably either Bel-Samu the Indeterminate or Urmalian Dast. That the PCs have met, it’s Shul Nazidar; the blackest clad magician of the Black District.
5. Who is the greatest warrior in the land? Tatiana Von Barin could probably lay claim to that title.
6. Who is the richest person in the land? The Tyrant or the Autarch. No point being at the top of the political pyramid unless it’s to line your own pockets.
7. Where can we go to get some magical healing? Street side mystics/fortune tellers/charlatans such as Murko the Munificent are your go to guys and girls. Of course there are much more reliable non magical healers, physicians and bone setters dotted around the city.
8. Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath? You’re going to struggle. Most alchemists could brew you an antivenin but the others are going to require some adventure.
9. Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells? No.
10. Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC? Get combing the streets, it’s all out there.
11. Where can I hire mercenaries? Are you kidding? The Secret Shack of Mercenaries, Sellspears and Blades for Hire of course.
12. Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law? The Patrician District is not open to the lowborn and is patrolled by private security. Also the carriage of all poles greater than six feet in length is outlawed throughout Nox Aeterna.
13. Which way to the nearest tavern? The Secret Shack of Mercenaries, Sellspears and Blades for Hire has a cans only bar, otherwise; throw a stone, chances are it’ll land within ten feet of a drinking establishment.
14. What monsters are terrorizing the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous? No one in the city gives a single fuck about what happens in the countryside. However, if you killed a giant white alligator in the sewers people would be suitably impressed.
15. Are there any wars brewing I could go fight? Nox Aeterna is in a constant state of low level conflict with Ashrain. The Hundred Kingdoms are always at war with one another. 
16. How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes? The Battlepits in the Correctional District are always looking for legal representatives and participants in the current fashionable flavour of violent due process.
17. Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight? Yes. There are more cults and secret societies in Nox Aeterna than can easily be counted.
18. What is there to eat around here? Meat on a stick is good, just don’t ask what meat.
19. Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for? The Eye of Seros is reputed to be somewhere beneath the city. It’s apparently some sort of huge gemstone that may or may not be the crystallised eye of a dead god.
20. Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure? Dragon? If there is one it’s in the Far North, beyond the Mountains of Cobalt and Black Glass. The nearest big treasure hoard is probably beneath the city somewhere. It is after all built on the ruins of a thousand civilisations.
21. Not a question but the location of the original post: jeff's gameblog

How the (Grim) North Was Run

I have alluded in my previous posts about Carcosa and sort of thinking about Runequest, that I do not prep very much to run games. This is true. I’m not anti prep, I think having something ready to go for each session is valuable, no matter how good you are at improvising your sessions on the fly. The danger of too improvisational an approach being that you come to rely on the same twists and tricks to keep things moving. This can lead to games getting a bit samey from session to session. Yet the ability to improvise is essential. As Dave Morris commented to me on his blog ”no scenario should survive contact with the players.” So I prep but I expect to improvise.

When I prep stuff it’s either a short list of notes or some sort of tool. A table is a good example, or a quick map. Brief notes about an NPC or location, or how the various factions within the setting have progressed their plans. 

So in my Grim North game, how did this manifest? I’m glad I pretended that you asked...

The Grim North ran as a mostly weekly game over google hangouts with a rotating cast of players. It was designed to be a drop in when you can sort of game and I always stated I would run it if two or more players were available. Sometimes it ran twice a week if I thought there were too many people for one session but this maybe happened once or twice over the course of a year.

The central conceit of the game was that the PCs were based out of the House of Mercenaries, Sellspears and Blades for Hire in the gigantic fantasy city-state of Nox Aeterna. The proprietor of the House would offer a range of jobs to the PCs based on what paid work was available. Also there were weekly rumours to pursue and massive fantasy city (and wilderness beyond that) to  explore if they so chose. The idea was this would present a sandbox in which short, episodic adventures could take place and if a player missed a session, it wouldn’t matter too much. There was no overarching metaplot (gods forbid.)

This was my campaign pitch,  

The Grim North awaits. It is the Age of Samhain: The countless black spires of Nox Aeterna, City of Eternal Night, rest upon the ruins of a thousand forgotten civilisations. Insane patricians, bizarre cults and shadowy, eldritch forces all vie for power. Outside the walls, barbaric tribes war constantly with each other and the unforgiving winter. In dark, cobwebbed forests and haunted ruins, stalk malign beasts who want you dead and hordes of weird goblins steeped in slaughter and madness. This is old school D&D, where great dangers yield great rewards and a glorious death; or a ignominious demise, penniless, bleeding out on the snow.

I’m not sure I’m as happy with it now as I was at the time. Certainly there are no goblins in the Grim North these days but that is one of those things that in games grow through play.

So from the GMs side, at first, I leaned heavily on Vornheim to run the city but as I slowly added more of my own tables and quirks to the place it began to take on a life of its own. The influences I was trying to draw on were Lankhmar, Megacity One, Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the film Dark City but generally it often felt as though I was channeling Ankh Morpork (unsurprisingly I 
suppose, it does parody many of the same influences.) In naming some of the districts I strived to give each a distinct flavour, done with the hackneyed device of assigning regional quirks to them. Although there was no Thieves Guild, rival crews owned turf in various districts and were randomly generated off a table I devised to name them. They’re more like the gangs from the Warriors than anything else.

The ruling class of Patricians were supposedly all insane through inbreeding and being descended from ancient families whose origins pre date the modern city. As a result the table of Patricians included a list of random “insanities” although many of these simply resulted in weird or eccentric behaviour. I added tables for omens, weather (it’s snowing... moderately) and weird occurrences. There are random NPC Mercenaries from the House to act as hirelings and a table to generate cults (just their names really but it worked fine.) There is also a ridiculously over arcane table to generate Rekkar barbarian names and a better one to generate some tribe names for them to belong to.

That’s sort of it really. Come up with a couple of rumours and jobs (attach these to various locations within the city,)  make a few random rolls before the session and set the PCs loose to do what they want. 

Oh and improvise wildly. That’s important.