The Character of Time

I bought and played fourth edition because I had money and that's what they had. I had never played D&D before and had no-one to teach me so I had to learn from the 4th Ed Players Handbook.

This is a bit like learning to play the Guitar by reading a biography of Eric Clapton. A bad biography.


Actually I don't think the people who made 4th Ed actually really want anyone playing their game. Not deep down within themselves, or in the forgotten spaces of their thought. They believe they do but I felt the whiff of a kind of strange mind-scattered corporate double-think I have smelled many times before. I'd write about it but that wouldn't be useful and this blog is meant to be useful things.

So I went from there to Lamentations Of The Flame Princess which is about as far from 4th Ed as you can get. James Raggi had a lot of things to say in his game. I'll speak about one of them. Recorded Time.


You count the minutes in the dungeon so you know when the light runs out, and if the torch is black and dead then the players cannot see. And that's that. They are lost. In 4th Ed an adventuring kit packed with glow rods and lamp oil is bought for you and that game specifically says that most underground spaces are kept well lit by the inhabitants, or convenient phosphorescent fungi.


So we go from a dungeon lit like American Television to one with a hungry darkness. And from dramatic time to a cold measurement.


Like a lot of Raggi's advice I was both attracted to and repelled by this. His slightly aggressive puritanism is like a sharp block in the road of fun. It challenges but the challenge suggests a promise, that the road is deeper and longer if you get past.


Or maybe that's bullshit and there is no road.


I wanted to keep time in the dungeon but that is boring so I renamed the Hours.


In Balach the Hours live. Each individual segment of the day has a quiet thought, a mind and a relationship with the other Hours. As each hour passes, somewhere in Balach, they duel in physical form. One hour will die and pass on, the other will live for sixty minutes and rule in the spaces between moments. Always the same way.


Unless you meet them by chance. And change the result.


If you can befriend an Hour, you can also become the enemy of one. So time can have both personality and politics. 

The Hours have names, eventually I plan to give them Stats.

Encounters in the Corridor

There is a strand of Afghanistan shaped as a buffer between two competing empires. A long finger of road reaching out in the mountainous region between Tajikistan and Pakistan.

It used to hold the only direct road from Afghanistan to China, but the border has been closed for some time and now the abandoned road leads nowhere.

I saw this on a map and was enraptured by the thin, strange tentacle of land. I decided to set my games there, or at least, in it's geography if not in our reality.

I threw in lots of ideas from other people. I have linked where is seemed appropriate. 

I still don't know what a Daemon of mathematics is or why they are hunted but I do know you catch one on a mobius strip of paper that hangs from a spiderthread inside an empty jar.

Random Encounters in the Wakhan Corridor

1. Tabir Salil foot courier.
2. D6 Wild pack scarabs
3. 3D8 Maggot people writhe from the soil if the party rests on earthen ground at night.
4. D6 Skeleton Killers
5. A Daemon of Mathematics scratching itself along on the ground. (Wild Theorem.)
6. Ambush! D8 Guerrilla War Chimps.
7. Secret Badass. Roll Twice.

Looks Like	But Secretly Is
1. Old Woman	1. Jason Bourne-style ultra spy, on the run from organisation of the same.
2. Ancient Man	2. Level ten wizard who has sworn never to do evil and has been cursed never to be seen to do good.
3. Juggler/Clown	3. Totally insane serial killer
4. Total Idiot	4. Kung-Fu master whose hands are D8 weapons. Party level plus D4. Will try to stop any violence, by anyone, against anything. Will never kill but only knock-out.
5. Lost young girl/boy	5. Vampire who will drink once from one of the party as they sleep and then move on, never to be seen again.
6. Craftsman, or Doctor or Priest. Of whatever kind the party needs most.	6. Ghost but doesn’t know it. Carrying a terrible wound beneath clothes. Will lead party to scene of own murder and grow afraid when no evidence is found.

8. The Hours duelling as they pass.
9. A party of mildly decadent elves passing in a small apartment grown into the shell of a vast tortoise.
10. A thriving tavern built inside a decayed concrete building from the future.
11. Ulfire Carcosan Sorcerer in Palanquin with Dolm servants and a 1hp Spawn of Shub Niggerauth on a lead.
12. Mass courier for the Tabir Salil. Iridescent Pack Scarab loaded with dreams.
13. Cleric of Vorn. Party level plus D6. On a mission directly related to the last intelligent thing the PC’s killed.
14. Arkady Babchanko, a traumatised but effective lvl 4 contract soldier looking for a new life in the wilderness.
15. Theorem tracker from ‘The Grey Lady’. Vornheim’s best University.
16. Ant Attack! D100 Ants which are, roll a D6

1-2 Normal sized,

3-4 Dog sized (1hp),

5 Man Sized (1 D6 hd each) or

6 Horse Sized (2 D8 hd each)

17. A strange distance in the view. The road empties. The landscape seems featureless. You fill with fear, yet for no discernible cause. Look into the sky and name five shapes of clouds that you can see or lose D4 hp till next rest due to stress and loneliness.
18. Ruined ground and a knot of the sorrowful dead, D8.
19. Millipede wagon trader from, roll a D4
    1. Vornheim
    2. Solint
    3. Carcosa
    4. Otherpool
20. Climate Hawk feeding on the body of a, roll a D6
    1. Man
    2. Goat
    3. Scarab
    4. Mantis in full harness
    5. War Chimp
    6. Tortoise-House

Reviews

My goodreads page (which I didn't know I had.)



Fire on the Velvet Horizon


REVIEWS

BASIC RED
Not like any monster manual I'd ever read, I was certain, but still of its genus species. That was my expectation. My expectation can fuck off I guess because Fire on the Velvet Horizon is better than me.


Save vs Total Party Kill
Fire on the Velvet Horizon is a monster book, but that description seems reductive. Scrap Princess and Patrick Stuart have produced something very avante garde and truly unique.

Hack & Slash
I read a lot of fiction, and the creativity here is on par with some of the masters. Gene Wolfe displays this kind of creativity in his novels. Borges describes the type of hells these creatures inhabit in passing. McCarthy has the type of poetic turn that takes your mind from where it is and puts it somewhere you are not. This is what the book does.

James Raggi
Patrick Stuart & Scrap Princess' Fire on the Velvet Horizon and Rafael Chandler & Gennifer Bone's Lusus Naturae have redefined the monster bestiary for role-playing games and have basically made every single other such book boring, backwards, and useless.





Deep Carbon Observatory 

MAPS

If you prefer top-down maps, Gus L has created some for this adventure for free. go here to access them.

REVIEWS

Bryce Lynch at Ten Foot Pole gave it e very nice review.
GREAT adventure. More than enough content, and the content is VERY easy to build off of.

Robin Zink at RENFIELDS CAT has actually run it.

"I love this thing. It has introduced myself and a rotating circle of about ten friends to Old School role-playing and we are having the best fucking time."

Robin also did a whole series of posts about running it and even created an index.

Basicred RPG

"The phrase "There's a flood and your PCs are compelled to investigate!" is not in the module because it got in the way of poison and rules for the stairs, and because doing awesome things is taken as granted in your players."

Bonigen.org

"Like many contemporary adventures it’s shock full of desperation and sadness and malice. What makes it stand out, however, is the human scope."

Dungeon of Signs

"UltimatelyDeep Carbon Observatory is a thought provoking and wonderfuladventure, almost novelistic in its scope and strangeness." ..."Despite my affection for the creator of Deep Carbon Observatoryit has troubles. "

Save vs Totalpartykill

"Scrap Princess’ illustrations contribute to the overall tone of the book. I find her work is so frenzied and terrifying. Maybe that’s not the right word, but there is something about how she draws that I find really visceral. I don’t know anyone else that draws like her."

Hack and Slash

The nearest I can figure is avant garde is code for everything in this module is interesting and novel.

Cauldrons and Clerics

Seriously, my points here are - it gives you pretty much everything you need for 4-8 sessions of gaming, depending on your style (my style of games would probably end up at the higher end of that amount) - which for $10 is a steal. (In the same review Luka also goes into some of the negatives.)

Nerdwerds

This adventure deserves to be spoken about in hushed tones and discrete symbols.

Violent Media

Go buy this fucking thing… It’s incredibly good and very, very interesting.

rpggeek.com

While easily placed into plenty of popular fantasy role-playing settings—Greyhawk, Near, Hyperborea—Deep Carbon Observatory does have a rich science-fantasy vibe. I rather like that flavour in my Old School gaming—my reviews of The Dying Earth and Carcosa delight in such science-fiction trappings—and Deep Carbon Observatory is a fine entry into that tradition.

James Young at tenfoopolemic

Final Scores:7+ sessions of play
Average of 0.7 PC deaths/session.
2-3 apocalyptic scenarios inbound.

This isn't a review but you might find it interesting

Swords and Stitchery
DCO is at once disturbing and weird, because as I'm reading the pdf the sky is dripping down with rain and history. You see in 1955 my home state of  Connecticut suffered one of its worst disasters so far the flood of  Nineteen Fifty Five!
Beyond this link are the ruins of the original post:

Probably never meant to be a monster

This is from BLDGBLOG who took it from here.

"John Balaban describes how villagers growing rice during the Vietnam War—where Balaban, a conscientious objector, served with the International Volunteer Corps—stumble upon an extraordinary feature in the landscape:

Beyond the last treeline on the horizon
beyond the coconut palms and eucalyptus
out in the moon-zone puckered by bombs
the dead earth where no one ventures,
the boys found it, foolish boys
riding buffaloes in craterlands
where at night bombs thump and ghosts howl.
A green patch on the raw earth.

This "green patch" has an usual shape, however. Balaban continues:

In that dead place the weeds had formed a man
where someone died and fertilized the earth, with flesh
and blood, with tears, with longing for loved ones.
No scrap remained; not even a buckle
survived the monsoons, just a green creature,
a viny man, supine, with posies for eyes,
butterflies for buttons, a lily for a tongue.

And the sight of this "green creature" proves too fertile, unforgettable, haunting all the villagers who've seen it:

Now when huddled asleep together
the farmers hear a rustly footfall
as the leaf-man rises and stumbles to them.

Out of the darkness, convinced by the life they give to the land around them that they might not yet be dead, the missing-in-action pull themselves from the tangle of the earth and rise and walk again."

Number of Hit Dice varies according to the Fear of the Villagers, the darkness of the night and the sorrow of the dead ground.

I dont know if cross-posting this much from other blogs is the done thing or not. If anyone wants me to take it down or replace it with a link only, I will.

Frost Squid

O.K, I made a new thing for this from this plus I have had some Gins so spellcheck is working overtime.

I ignored stats that are not interesting or that you can make up for yourself.

Frost Squid

Frequency: Rare
AC: Pretty high, they can fly and are hard to see
Hit Dice : 3 probably
Treasure: None
Intelligence: non human but a bit freaky
 
Gently writhing translucent flying squid. Almost invisible in direct sunlight and at night . Therefore much more deadly in midday and midnight than in the changeable rays that bracket the day.

Named not for its temperature or appearance but for it's apparent motivation. The innocent Frost Squid is adapted for hunting in an abyssal space without light or sound and is drawn by expulsions of sadness and despair.

This means that in our world, the Frost Squid is drawn aggressively towards those who have suffered recent bereavement, the survivors of battles and disasters, parted or abandoned lovers and the generally depressed.

Which means that for most victims, things have already gone wrong, they are as low as they will get and are questioning the meaning of life itself.

Then they get attacked by a fucking flying invisible squid.

Frost Squid are sometimes kept by bastards for amusement.

Lord Monkey

A guy did this, so I did this. I will do some more in a bit.

 Lord Monkey

This is a crazy, ugly-looking, fucked-up monkey. It's only notable trait is that is seeks always to demonstrate its dominance over all other nearby animals. That includes all members of the Party.

It does this by climbing up their body and sitting on their head and staying there until they get rid of it or until they are no longer the most dominant person around.

The monkey is dexterous, violent, nimble, clever and persistent. One HD, but a high AC due to it's smallness, maneuverability and the fact that when you're trying to kill it, it's probably on someones head.

Having a Lord Monkey on your head does clearly prove to everyone around that you are the dominant person in the vicinity. If a guy walks into a bar with a monkey on his head you know he's not to be messed with.

However it does mean you have a fucking monkey on your head so the charisma benefits and minuses tend to even out.

If the PC's walk into a room with a very high status person, the monkey will do a quick estimate and change heads if necessary. It always knows who is the most powerful or highest level person in the room. Always.

 No. Always. Even then.

A good way to get rid of Lord Monkeys is to spend a lot of time with Dragons or Kings. Of course if this individual does end up with a monkey on their head, they will not be happy.

Everyone the PC's meet will believe absolutely that harming a Lord Monkey in any way is incredibly dangerous and VERY bad luck. They will tell the PC's this if asked and volunteer the information if not asked. They are wrong.

Conspiracies in Fallcrest

So in the 4^th Edition players handbook there was this town.

The town was called Fallcrest and it was quite useful. It had a lot of people and places in it but it wasn't very interesting.

So the people and the places were already there and I wanted the place to be interesting. So I started thinking about nice towns where everything is correctly arranged, 4^th Edition is a lot like a well arranged market town. This made me think of David Lynch.

And there was already a map and I love maps. And I am very lazy.

So I took the town-as-written as a kind of surface reality and decided to 'seed' other, stranger realities within it.

I made conspiracies, ten of them, and I put them in a spreadsheet.

The way this works is this. There are ten conspiracies and each conspiracy has ten stages of understanding. When the players get to the end they have a big fight with someone and that conspiracy is done.

As they walk into the town, throw a D10. That clue is the one they notice first. If it doesnt fit, pick one that does. You put an X in the box. The PC's will do something in response to the clue.

If the thing they do is creative, interesting, intelligent or if they just roll high, then find a way to introduce the next clue or event, or idea.

Track time closely. Days can become eventful. Most of the Schoolchildren in Fallcrest were dead by the end of day three.

If the players do something cool, perceptive or offbeat, or if you get bored, then roll a D10 and introduce another conspiracy. Or a new part of a current conspiracy.

Eventually the players are dealing with a lot of wierd clues and events. They do not all make sense in relation to each other but they do all make sense eventually. This creates a pleasant feeling of situational depth for the players.

Ok people kept asking so here is a link to the folder with all of the remaining Fallcrest stuff, including the spreadsheet.   LIIIIIIIINKKK

Conspiracies In Fallcrest