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| Jason Sholtis |
I mentioned that Jason and I were doing this in the "Marvel Method," which is to say that he's drawing story not from a panel-by-panel script, but instead from a plot, then I'm scripting the dialogue and captions from his pages (and then lettering the script on the pages. We're a two man operation!).
Above you see a bit of the finished artwork for page one, but here is the rough of that entire page:
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Things don't go simply easily, as their ship falls prey to the infamous pirate, Bosa Sennen. From that encounter, the sisters are propelled into danger and more adventure than they ever wanted, and ultimately, the deep mysteries of their civilization.
The books are highly enjoyable in their own right, and the world would make a great rpg setting, but beyond that, I think that, in part, they are excellent inspiration for dungeoncrawling sort of adventure in any setting.
Working Class Treasure Hunters
The "dying in holes in the ground" aspect of low-level D&D beloved by old school play is poorly represented in the fiction of Appendix N, but the Revenger series very much portrays this sort of thing. Privateer crews are typically hard luck folks with scars, missing limbs, and stories of former comrades lost in the pursuit of that elusive big score. Such crewmembers have specialties: readers, openers, appraisers, to be efficient in the unglamorous work of seeking out treasures. These treasures are often strange--not as strange as things brought from the Zone in Roadside Picnic--but things that the current civilization can't make nor sometimes even guess their intended purpose. In these novels, these items often function as low level, utilitarian magic items.
Dungeon Lore
Having good intelligence on Baubles is a crucial part of "cracking" them. Baubles are surrounded by force fields that only open at certain times and openers rely on information from other privateers and their own readings and calculations to augur the time and duration of openings. Acquired maps are also essential for efficient and profitable "delves." Baubles have colorful names like His Foulness, the Cuckoo, Wedza's Eye, and the Yellow Jester, and their own internal arrangements and hazards.
Creative Uses
I mentioned before items brought out of Baubles, well their are obvious things of value like quoins (their unit of money), robots, or energy weapons, but also things that can be used less obviously in the privateers life. Bosa Sennen's dread ship has near invisible black sails made from catch cloth found in Baubles: a material that responds to some unknown and otherwise undetected emanation of the sun. Privateers prize even small peices of look stone, a strange glass-like substance that when peered through allows the ability to see through solid object.
The Revenger series presents, in part, professional treasure hunters focused on resource-oriented and practical aspects of their trade. There are few "monsters" presented--just the pirates and one other threat I won't give away. The dangers are traps or merely hazardous aspects of the environment. These aspects make more solid inspirations for elements of D&D that don't usually get much of a showcase in fiction.
Currently, I've been considering a variation on an idea I've had before: a high adventure occasionally dungeoneering fantasy world inspired by Japanese Standard (Western) Fantasy. Magitech will plan a big role in the setting, and there will be a loose approach to anachronism (even looser than standard D&D settings). This sort of setting will also support the expansive "ancestries" available these days in 5e and high action combat.
The incursion of "demons" (more like the broader D&Dism of fiends than the specifically chaotic evil variety) in service of a Demon King that will reside in the dark side of the physical world rather than a separate plane. I think the world will be shape like an inverted bowl with the demon world being within the concave surface. The "rim" will be the Terminator, a region that never sees more of the sun than twilight and holds numerous lonely fortifications to watch for demonic incursion.
To the extent that it will be variant from standard D&D, I don't worry much about my players accepting it. They've been playing in Azurth for over a decade so that shouldn't be a problem! I do want it to be distinct from Azurth though to provide a somewhat different experience.
The Plane of Shadow is no ethereal realm, but a place of matter as solid as any, but it remains aloof and invisible. It only interaction is with gravity, so that there might well be whole ecologies of this shadow matter upon the Earth unknown to the mundane world.
If the black mirrors truly exist, it implies that there is or once was, a civilization or entity on the other side capable of constructing some sort of form for a mind passing through. If such a Shadow or intelligence civilization exists, they could well have some means of sending agents into the world of mundane matter as well.
They asked the guards where they might find the bridge the Shadows told them about. The Mole guards were surprised to see them still alive, but they told them how to find the bridge, though they warned them (so far as they knew) it was a bridge to oblivion. On the way, they met another chatty ghost trapped in a jar (this one they didn't let out) who seemed to confirm the bridge led nowhere.
They moved ahead, and soon they were crossing a ghostly but sturdy enough bridge into a magical darkness that was almost tangible. It always seemed to hang before then like the surface of a draining liquid. Eventually the bridge became a stone tunnel, and the tunnel gradually became vertical rather than horizontal. But then there was a light at the end. They stopped at a couple of places to reconsider their life choices, but in the end moved on.
They climbed toward the light and emerged through a well made from paper (collapsing it as they did) into a paper town. The buildings began to collapse, folding up around them, as did the various flat, cut-out people they saw.
They were approached by a cut out of a redheaded girl in a crown. She said she was Princess Seven, ruler of Paper Town, and she had been expecting them, "the heroes." She related the story about how the girl whose shadow she was had been given the Paper Town by a wandering minstrel on her birthday long ago. The minstrel had told her that someday heroes would come seeking a page from the book, and she must give them the town if the world was to be saved.
By now, the town had folded, shrank, and lost its color until it was a blank page. The Princess picked it up in her flat hand and gave it to Waylon. The party asked what would happen to her. She said she would go now to be reunited with the princess whose shadow she was, who had grown into a queen and died a long time ago. With than, the color faded from her, and she drifted to the ground, a paper cutout in the shape of the shadow of a seven-year-old girl.
The party broke the magic gems they had been given to return to the headquarters of the princesses. They found only one gnome guarding the equipment. He was surprised to see them as it had been weeks since they went on their mission. They were presumed to have failed, and the princesses and the amassed armies began the assault on the Sapphire City.
Realizing there was no time to lose, the party affixed the book page to a wall, then passed through the door into the outer sanctum of the Wizard in the Sapphire Castle. Crossing the circular room to the grand doors on the other side down a cerulean carpet, they were attacked by a mass of shadows from several other doors. Surrounded, the party fought through the minions surprisingly quickly (the shadows only rolled one to-hit roll in the double digits!), then listened at the door. Nothing.
Opening it, they found the Wizard on the other side, but he was not as they expected. He was desiccated and insensate upon his throne, energy draining from his body into the black, darkly glowing miniature sun that hung menacingly above his head.
Before they could do anything, a thick column of smoke-like shadow emerged from the orb, forming into an immense snake-like form with a human face. It spoke in a like the grind of heavy stone: "I am the worm that gnaws at the corpse of time. A cancer in the heart of existence. I have come to bring an ending to this world!"
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| Tsutomu Nihei |
Master of the Dungeon
Rpg dungeons sometimes have bosses, but mostly they seem to sit and wait for dungeoneers to get to them. In other media, they sometimes take a more active role taunting the protagonists or bedeviling them in various ways before the ultimate conflict. While this might become tedious, I feel like when used judiciously, it could be an interesting change of pace.
Time Trial
Despite the emphasis on resource management in some dungeon games, I don't think I've seen a dungeon that opened and close on a certain schedule. This is the case in all the "bauble"-based vaults in Reynolds Revenger series and forecasting the opens and how long they will last is an important job for looters. The anime adaptation of I Left My A-Rank Party... also has some dungeons for which time is a factor, as I recall.
A dungeon with strict time limits, in addition to adding pressure to move quickly, would also force characters to have some strategy about what they explore and loot. Do you try for the big-ticket items immediately or focus on quick exits with lower value items?
A Team Sport
While adventuring guilds aren't ubiquitous in settings, they're an established element. What I don't think I have seen in a rpg setting, though, is competing guilds or organizations (larger than individual parties). Inspiration could be found in the chariot racing factions (demes) of Byzantium or Roman collegia.
With sword and shield, and a bag with a couple of coins (a KS reward from Outgunned Adventure) she set out to go to the wizard's tower (the upstairs of our home) where she had been told that a wizard had imprisoned a unicorn (a statue of the Last Unicorn from movie located on a bookshelf in her bedroom).
The quest involved the occasional puzzle (a tic-tac-toe cypher, a coordinate grid puzzle, riddle answering, and some light math) combined with random encounters. These were strategically placed pairs of cups, one of which had a monster (a cardboard mini) under it and the other either a coin or a friendly encounter that provided clues. For example, a gnome Meeple revealed that the Lime Gnome (a green garden gnome statue that for some reason sits in our dining room) runs an apothecary shop that will sell you a potion that gives a power up.
Monster fights were handled with simple dice rolls of a d6. Scoring a hit required beating the monster's roll by a certain amount, and monsters had a certain number of "hit points." My daughter had her own "life points" in the form of three hearts on sheets of paper clipped together.
As it turned out, my daughter was very luck. She only fought one monster before the boss and out rolled the monster every single time.
She enjoyed it and immediately asked for another one, but I said that would have to wait for another day.
The group objects to the possibility of running into their earlier selves, but Princess Viola and her Gnomes already had that figured out. The slide show they present says they are sending the PCs back to 5 days after they left the area.
When they arrive in the past, there is still one Gloom Elf in the tower, but he's in no mood for fighting. He says the Shadow retreated into the large, whirlpool of shadow that now takes up most of the tower, but there was a blockage in it somewhere and he doesn't seem to have gotten where he was going.
With little else to go on, the party jumps in after him. They find themselves (surprisingly) in a prison dungeon, partially flooded, and partially caved in, run by Mole Folk. The mole folk are remarkably lackadaisical about their situation, noting that time runs differently here, but they are reasonably friendly. The dungeon itself is something of a maze with unnatural darkness, so even the mold guards used unspooling twine to help from getting lost. The prisoners are in oubliettes with sort of steampunk contraption doors, set to open when their sentence is up.
Using their hand-held device given to them previously by the Princesses, the party discovers the Shadow is in one of these cells. Waylon is able to pick the locking mechanism, causing the chronometer to run faster, making it open.
The Shadow is inside, and though the part is expecting him to fight them, he is willing to go, even knowing what they are up to. Having had different experiences from the Wizard, he has had a change of heart. He says if they can find "the bridge" located elsewhere in the dungeon, they can get to a place to acquire a page from the Book of Doors that will take them directly to the Wizard's sanctum.
The party sends the Shadow back to the Princesses with a gem. The Shadow suggests the way to find the bridge is to ask the guards. They intend to do just that, but no sooner than they are out of the cell and debating a course of action than a random encounter roll leads to a very ugly bird-beast coming upon them.
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| Don Maitz |
At its base, necromancy is the magical art of summoning and controlling shades. It's practice is watched closely by local authorities and the Instrumentality (in those areas where it holds sway). Being able to interact with the shades of the recently deceased is undeniably useful, not the least in forensic necromancy. Where necromancers primarily run afoul of the Instrumentality and temporal authorities is when they use their arts to create undead.
The criminal necromancer creates undead for two primary reasons. The first is for manual labor. These workers don't require a shade in the semblance of any particular person, so necromancers can pluck from the either degraded or partial shades; rudimentary data on physical movements is their primary concern. With a corpse as a substrate and sufficient art applied to their animation, a necromancer can turn out laborers for difficult conditions or troops whose shock value may compensate for their lack of intelligence and skill at arms.
The second application is more lucrative but requires more skill and time. That is the provision of immortality, or as close as their arts may come to it. This requires the creation of a specially made shade, imaged with precision from the current mental vector of the aspiring immortal. In the fallen Latter Age, this generally means destructive mapping of the individual's brain and its functioning. The intellect is then housed in a suitable, durable platform and placed within their old body. The body will inevitably decay, but the necromancer's arts can delay that decay, preserving function perhaps for millennia. The culmination of these techniques is the lich, though botched jobs, and cost- or material-saving techniques have created many other variations, which are more common.
Little is known for certain about these beings. In Denizens of the Beyond by Pseudo-Vespydron, the most widely known work to examine them in detail, Mind Flayers are said to have come from the sphere of Mars, but whether they are natives to that world or from some even more distant home, even Denizens rather credulous author does not say.
Pseudo-Vespydron uncritically accepts the cephalopod-headed humanoid appearance of popular portrayals and the idea that they were obligate consumers of human brains. The later (and comparatively more sober) histories of Malgrunda note no reliable descriptions of their physical form exist and put forward the theory that their purpose in preying upon the Earth was to acquire not foodstuffs but slave minds, derived from the destructive mapping of the brains of still-living captives. Perhaps the only place where she might be criticized in straying from established fact is in the time she devotes to Hseng's baseless assertion that the cephalopod skull is actually the memory of an environmental helmet with attached manipulators.
Like the clerics of the Instrumentality, those that might be termed druids are aware to one degree or another that in more lucent ages the environment of the Earth and its citizens interaction with it were managed by a great Mind. This Mind is no more, at least not in any unified form (so the clerics believe), but the many of the component minds still haunt the world, and the particles of its sensory apparatus of that superintelligence still weave through the winds, fall with the rains, and course through the bloodstreams of animals.
By means of secret lore and technology, the druids are able to converse and with the lesser minds that record and synthesize this sensory data. These processes are known as elementals. While the elementals occasionally form connections with more active systems on their own, the druid's involvement often bridges the two, giving the earth a voice to humankind that dwells upon it. Like the magi, druids are at times able to command the remnant nanotechnological systems, though how they achieve these powers is a closely guarded secret. Among their more impressive abilities, they can cause avatars to be instantiated from natural features for short periods of time or effect change in local weather patterns.
Unlike the Instrumentality, the druids do not believe that the Gaean mind is irrevocably destroyed. Instead, they view her as suffering from an illness, and illness from which they work to help her recover. They don't seek the re-ascendence of humankind, but rather the restoration of a balance they feel the Ancients achieved but then squandered.
Our Land of Azurth 5e game continued last night as the party confronted the Wizard of Azurth and Morzengersturm over the fate of Roderick Drue, a young occultist, at the Columbia Exposition in 1893 Chicago.
The Wizard recognizes the party calls forth shadows in the form of Expo attendees to attack them. And there are a lot of them! Luckily these are minions (as per the minion rules in Flee, Mortals!), so the party is able to mow them done, but it takes a while and gives them a moment of fright as there are a lot of them. Erekose, Waylon, and the activated Figurine of Wondrous Power Bear takes down five at the entrance of the tent. Shade goes after those coming through the side of the tent with her bow. Zabra witchbolts a couple of them.
Zabra's familiar, a cat, is dutifully carrying the transport gem to the target, Roderick Drue. When it breaks the gem with a bite, a cloud of colorful smoke engulfs both cat and occultist and transports them to the Land of Azurth.
Waylon gets frightened by the shadows, so moves inside for an attack on Mortzengersturm. The party has a history with the Mad Manticore as they killed him in--well, their past, his future. Zabra delivers a psychic bolt that incapacitates the Manticore wizard before he can act.
His ally and his minions gone, the Wizard teleports away.
The party uses their other jewels to return to Azurth themselves. After some healing they are ready to plan their next mission: black to the Shadow Tower.
The magi of the several collegia seek out newly emerged mages to teach them to use their gifts. Those wild talents who are not initiated into a collegium are known as sorcerers.
The place of the magi varies across the cultures of the world. Where the Instrumentality is at its strongest their practice is generally restricted, regulated, and monitored. Occasionally they are outright banned, but their abilities are simply too valuable to governments and even to the clergy for this to be a common practice.
Nevertheless, the life of a magus is often precarious. Superstitious common folk can easily turn against them, and Instrumentality zealots are often eager to find a reason to punish or imprison them. Beyond that, the very forces they wield and the knowledge they seek can easily prove dangerous to them as much as anyone else.
"We of the Institute receive an intensive historical inculcation; we know the men of the past, and we have projected dozens of possible future variations, which, without exception, are repulsive. Man, as he exists now, with all his faults and vices, a thousand gloriously irrational compromises between two thousand sterile absolutes – is optimal. Or so it seems to us who are men."
- Jack Vance, The Killing Machine
Clerics are ordained individuals in the service of the Instrumentality of Humankind. The purpose of their order is the preservation of Humanity and its restoration as stewards of the Earth. To this end, they seek to discourage the worship of false gods such as digital minds and alien entities, and to limit and manage technologies that might alter humanity or thwart its destiny.
While the Instrumentality is technically a nonreligious entity, its organization and trappings mimic religious forms, and its exoteric teachings (officially allegorical) regarding the Earth Mother and the Primeval or Cosmic Man form the basis of a folk belief system, and this system, along with Instrumentality's ceremonies and rituals have developed into a civic religion in many places.
The Instrumentality is not a group of luddites, despite their goals. They hold technology must be understood and mastered, so that what is valuable maybe used for the benefit of humanity, but not it's transformation. They maintain, for instance, almost total control of advance healing techniques, and can wield terrible weapons if the need arises.
The Institute of Vance's Demon Princes series and the Church of Foster's Humanx Commonwealth are a big influence here but pushed in a more Dune direction by the Terran Chantry Ruocchio's Sun Eater series.
The party's adventures, as dutifully recorded by the fans in the Domed City of Yai, show that they had encountered the younger astral projection of the Wizard, Roderick Drue. They had also encountered a Shadow duplicate of him in the Half-Real Tower. If the Wizard could be denied these two, he would be weakened.
There was some debate over what "denial" entailed. It was decided killing was an option, but capture was sufficient, so long as the operation moved quickly and was followed by an attack on the Wizard.
Roderick Drue had claimed to have been sent from a place called Chicago in 1893. A time and place far in the past. Luckily, Viola has a time machine. After getting appropriate clothing from Yai, a map of a place called the Columbian Exposition, and a locator device, the party is ready to go.
Upon arrival, they are somewhat distracted by the strange sights and sounds, but they stay focused. As they get closer, they are startled to see the Wizard walking in conversation with Mortzengersturm (who the crowds don't seem to notice). They also are concerned when they discover they appear to be being shadowed by demonic creatures:
They trace young Drue to a hookah establishment in the Turkish Village, where he is meeting with Mortzengersturm and the Wizard. The party has a jewel when crushed that will release a small cloud and transport anyone in it back to Azurth. When Dagmar and Zabra try to find a way to deliver that to Drue, the others have to leave the tent to engage the two demons encircling it.
The demons are defeated, but not before Mort and the Wizard become aware and move to beat a retreat with Drue in tow...
We start with the secret experimentation with psychic phenomena in a small town. Through this experiment, a psychic rift to another world is opened. The reality of this world is either maleable or difficult for the human mind to comprehend. The psychic kid raised in isolation for the experiment, doesn't add much detail to the world and its denizens, but thanks to rift, the other world (or an entity in it) begins to make contact with the minds of other, susceptible individuals in the town.
One of these kids plays D&D, so the world begins to frame itself (or become framed) to humans in D&D terms. It's a small realm in Gygaxian fashion just a funhouse mirror of the kid's own surroundings, but with a fantasy Medieval adventure overlay.
Either of their own accord or as recruits of the shadowy researchers the kids would begin to explore this realm of Dungeons & Dragons. The psychic avatars of the kids are often imbued with the classes and abilities of their game characters but mentally and emotionally remain the kids that they are.
There's a dark power in this fantasy realm, though. A demonic sorcerer with origins in our world as well--and a desire to make the two realms one under his rule.
Looking at my blog states, my most popular post ("Old School Blogger Advancement Table") was done as sort of a joke but also an attempt to be grab the attention of weekly(ish) blog cycle of that day. I guess in that it succeeded in that regard, but it seems even more frivolous to me today.
The next two most popular posts were part of a series "Real Dungeons, American Style." The top one was "Murder Castle" about H.H. Holmes, featuring the blueprints of his home that were published in the newspaper after he was caught.
The 7th most popular post was "AD&D Cosmology: A Defense." I think I've written a number of posts defending, elaborating, and riffing off the Great Wheel.
The 10th most popular post was where I announced that Weird Adventures was available. The first actual Weird Adventures post is "Remember Prester John," a few places lower.
The most recent post in the top 20 is from 2023. "The Adventure-Point Crawl" was inspired by my friend's Chris Kutalik's point crawl posts, but also rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender with my daughter.
Maybe for the 20th anniversary, assuming I'm still around then, I'll do a list of my favorite posts.
The inhabitants of a bottled setting may or may not know they are bottled. If discovering that fact or discovering the why or how of it is the main focus of the setting, you're may well be looking at a Mystery Terrarium. Really, though, all that stuff can just be background for a setting with any other sort of focus where the boundaries just happen to be hard stops rather than the place where things get fuzzy.
What's the appeal of this sort of setting? Well, for one, it can be used to disguise the true nature of the setting. The universe might actually be science fictional, but the "bottle" marks the boundary within which you can run a traditional fantasy campaign, if you want. Crossing the boundary can then mark a major turning point in a campaign, like potentially to a whole other sort of game.
The other thing is a that a bottle need not be impassable. Krishna in de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias series is a sort of a bottle wherein people from a technologically advanced, spacefaring civilization can play at pseudo-Medieval Sword & Planet heroes. Portal fantasies, in general, are not necessarily bottles but could easily be (particularly the sort involving a person somehow getting sucked into an MMORPG world). That allows players to play characters much more like themselves but still get involved in fantasy action.
In the end, though, I suppose the creative constraint it applies makes for an interesting challenge and heightens the potential for player engagement with setting mysteries. Vast traditional settings are great but there's nothing like having the players hit a wall they didn't expect to be there or have hints dropped that things aren't what they seem to get them engaged.
United Federation of Worlds: A multiple species union of planet governments organized to promote peace, justice, and mutual prosperity.
The Imperium: The largest revival to the Federation is a fascist and oppressive human-supremacist state. It boasts a powerful military, including a large army of clone soldiers.
Kurgon Horde: Once a group of factionalized, spacefaring humanoid raiders, a new Emperor has emerged among them, claiming the mantle of the mythic First Emperor and forging the disparate tribes into a single nation. Once merely a menace to border settlements of the Federation and the Imperium, the Kurgons now pose a more significant threat.
Outlaw Expanse: A lawless region of spaces, kept so due to its function as a buffer zone, but also due to the bribes paid by its Syndicate crimelords. The region has a whole is a melting pot of various species, the some of the crime syndicates are single species in nature. Illegal commodities in other regions of the galaxy such as slaves, certain addictive drugs, and some cybernetics are available here.
Corporate Zone: Another border region whose only government is large, economic powers. The Corporates are constantly engaged in small-scale conflict and espionage as they jockey for power against one another. Their R&D facilities, with no fear of government regulation or oversight, turn out exotic weaponry and dubious consumer goods that sometimes find their way into other regions via the black market. There are rumored to be an unusual number of Precursor ruins in the Zone, some of which contain biotechnologies that the Corporations have been able to exploit.
