BRITAIN!!!!

    "Losing faith in gelignite we finally came round to the possibility of diving and Graham Balcombe's engineering skill produced a snorkel-like device from a cycle frame, raspberry valve and a garden hose. Water pressure on the chest prevented the diver reaching the necessary depth and wetsuits were then unknown and Graham Balcombe was removed from the water too cold even to speak. I had a go with the outfit but the engineering skill which had constructed it failed to ensure that the garden hose remained attached, and I also had to be removed from the water, wet inside and out."

Jack Sheppard helping to invent cave diving in 1934. Thats the kind of thinking that has got this country where it is today.

From 'The Last Adventure'

"You can't feminize me, I'll demote you."

Teens are back and the tables have turned. Boyd Of The Rope is no longer a man mountain with a strength of 18 but a tired toothless middle-aged man, desperately clutching the Birdhouse that now contains his soul.

A massive battle using Zak S's Moshpit Rules and the Dungeon Dozens Army Of Evil tables saw the teens facing an epic force of evil plant-based necromancers with only friendly Lizardmen, a detachment of Predator Drones from the future, a Gorgon, pick-wielding man-ape shock troopers and Evil Fake Luke Skywalker.

Result 7 on the Heavy Infantry table is a 'Hard-bitten division of armoured simulacra of famous champions of good'. So I let them name the hero's. We got:-

Lancelot.

Aulcard. (Teen 1's Halloween costume. He brought the hat to the game.)

Ben 10. (Soul eaten when he fell into a moat made of the evil green mist from Anastasia.)

Buzz Lightyear. (Stamped to death)

Teen1 "Ahhh, we could have got Superman. But we just went for ones that were funny."

The Terminator. (T1000 died saving Teen 2 from lightning caused by flying Predator Drones into Climate Hawks.)

Luke Skywalker.

Ash Ketchum. (Punched to death before deploying his first Pokemon. Generally considered by all present to be secretly evil as 'he never ages, he's been on missions that take 13 years and he still says "I'm twelve".' Table opinion was that Ash hangs around with a lot of new people as he is secretly disposing of them to conceal his freakishly aged body.)

Mario. (Cause of death unclear. Either tried to jump on someone in the battle and got skewered, or tried to eat a bad mushroom and exploded. Not enough time for anyone to check.)

Commander Shepherd. (Survived. I think.)

And perhaps one or two other Amine characters I'm not familiar with.

Teen3 ably prevented a FLAILSNAIL incursion by pointing out that 'I've got a telepathic snail right here.' Teen's high charisma and snail-based psionics enabled him to subvert the FLAILSNAIL'S loyalty. Same teen still takes 5 minutes of furrowed brow when I ask him 'how to you hide?' when he wants to use stealth.

Battle ended with the Teens taking down an evil* Zoimancer that Teen 1 had previously tricked into becoming a Minotaur, thereby making him more dangerous, while an evil Liche with recently stolen eyes sat on his new Flailsnail and laughed.

Success resulted in no magic items, but a field promotion for Teen2, who was randomly assigned command at the start of the battle, now making him a 'Major General'. Which proved useful when the others laughed at his Halloween costume for possibly containing a skirt.

*Though the word really has no relative meaning in the campaign.

Khara-Khoto

I've been watching the NHK 70's doumentary series on the Silk Road. Pretty much every episode has tonnes of GameFuel but episode four, 'The Dark Castle' is almost a D&D module in documentary format.

We have-

-An ancient ruin whose name translates directly as 'dark castle'.
-Local peasants who warn the film crew not to go there as 'bad things happened there'
-An old Mongol guide who takes them, but refuses to go inside.
-And won't approach at night.
-And sings an ancient tribal song of the castles doom.
-The keep itself, a ruin the size of a small town.
-A freaky blair-wich camera shot when the 'Dark Castle' first appears over the dunes.
-Collapsed temples, preserved by the desiccating wind from the gobi dessert.
- A last king. The Super-strong Buddhist named 'Batir' known as 'The Black General' and his unbeaten army.
- Batirs treasure, 80 cartloads of gold and silver.
- His war with, besiegement by and death at the hands of... GHENGIS KHAN.
- Batir killed his family and hid his treasure before his death. Treasure has never been found.
- 2000 year old silk fragments, a collapsed column disgorging ancient tokens for the dead, a single building standing alone outside the castle walls (the Mosque) and some handy PR for the Peoples Republic if China (they launch missiles!)

If you have an hour free... 

 

Students often happen to accept and transmit absurd information

'Al-Mas udi for instance, reports such a story about Alexander.

Sea monsters prevented Alexander from building Alexandria. He took a wooden container in which a glass box was inserted, and dived it to the bottom of the sea. There he drew pictures of the devilish monsters he saw. He then had metal effigies of these animals made and set them up opposite the place where building was going on. When the monsters came out and saw the effigies, they fled. Alexander was thus able to complete the building of Alexadria.

It is a long story made up of nonsensical elements which are absurd for various reasons ...'(Khaldun lists some reasons)'... Furthermore, the jinn are not known to have specific forms and effigies. They are able to take on various forms …. All this throws suspicion upon the story.'

(my italics)

Notes so far, and some questions

Notes so far-

The language is beautiful

biospeleology

stygofauna

troglomorphic characterisitcs

Troglobiont

Troglophile

Trogloxene

Stygobiont

Thalassostygobiont

speleothems – cave decorations

“troglobitism is not an evolutionary dead end.”

Questions/Things I need to think about/need answers to.

HOW FAR UNDERGROUND CAN YOU GET ON MEDIEVAL LIGHT TECHNOLOGY? - comments appreciated on this one.

Currently looks like you can get down to a certain depth on secular/sensible light tech. Then in the bottom reaches civilisations would grow around exploitable light sources. Bioluminescene, whale oil from albino whales in the hidden oceans, lava conduits? But the long dark reaches in-between would be wilderness, can only adventure there with magic light or exotic sources.

Fluorescence, Phosphorescence, Bioluminescence, and Chemiluminescence all a bit different.

Aim to have a clear page plan by Christmas.

How the fuck does Infravision work. Infra-red of what? How does darkvision work?

Need some way of working out light per kilo/pound for illuminating materials. Hight LPH = survival value.

How quickly do you hallucinate underground and how much and what of?

TIME – A sliding scale as the human time sense changes underground.

The dangers are many and constant. The rewards should be few but mighty. Not only material but aesthetic.

Book to be arranged from the centre out. The centre pages that fall open naturall and stay open most easily should be those the DM needs RIGHT NOW. Moving outwards from the centre pages should be those which the DM needs most frequently and the tools which can be learnt most quickly. As we move towards the front and back covers we find the pages which are used less frequently or which require more time to use effectively. Book-as-tool. Is this a clever/stupid idea?

Climbing is a remarkable thing and intelligent climbing twice remarkable.

Have knots drawn on page, if fighting while hanging on, player must place pencil on page and trace pattern continuously while throwing dice, without removing pencil from paper or going over line. Clever/stupid?

The most vital parts of underdark travel are the least interesting parts of the game. Encumbrance and slowness. Need to energise choices.

Caves isolate individuals. Tactical scale game will usually be about using innovative thinking to overcome separating effect of the environment? >Take Risks To Work Together<

“dark life” colonies of microbes thriving in acid-drenched pitch black netherworlds. Extrapolating from microbial extremophiles to alternate evolutionary paths?

An underground silk-road with the oasis being eruptions of wild environments, each inhabited by different extremophiles. For them these are distant trading posts. Extremophile Treasure Chemistry? Treasures from impossible environments?

Vornheim has tools for generating different scales of action. City plan, street plan, building plan. Start with the smallest and work up in scale and down in depth. Scale and volume

Cavers remove the cardboard tubes from toilet rolls to reduce weight. Lightness is a powerful value multiplier underground. Drow swords would have a much of the blade removed a possible, like bike riders who drill holes in the frame to remove mass.

False Machine Moderation Policy

This blog has never been popular enough for me to actually give a shit about how I moderate it, but at this point I should make my policy explicit. How will I deal with all the complex human interaction that comes with hosting a blog?

Like Stalin on Cocaine.

So, if you are asking yourself 'hey, I'm not sure if this is appropriate, maybe this isn't the kind of thing this blog is about, maybe I'm crossing some sort of line'

All you need to do is imagine saying the same thing in front of Stalin when he's coked up. What does Stalin think of your comment?

YOU HAVE NO IDEA BECAUSE HE IS AN INSANE DICTATOR WHO WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY AND ERASE YOU FROM HISTORY. FOR NO REASON.

Understand if you come on here you are entering the sphere of a paranoid, resentful, fearful, angry lunatic who will react to any perceived or imagined or suggested slight with rapid and excessive force, or not, and will then deny the whole thing, even to himself.

Allright Then

If I publicly state I'm goint to do this (to random people on the internet) then I can't really back down or give up can I?

I even bought a special notebook

Vornheim-style, ready for play at the table, create-your-own-underdark.