Bandits of Fort Emridy: Turning classic modules into outlaw PC settings

Having lived several months on the outside of civil society, my perspective on running adventuring parties has changed somewhat. As two or three of you may know, I have been chased from my home by a pack of demons intent on tormenting me for sins against... well it all sounds rather silly when I try to explain it, so go back and read the posts I made back in January. 

As a result of my situation, my gaming compadres are also people who are on the run, either from the law or from forces far worse. These folks are not particularly interested in serving the common good, they're motivated by survival. They're also not particularly interested in being evil for the fun of it, so "clearing out" the KEEP on the Borderlands is not very appealing either. They like to think that they're doing good in their own way.

Because of this new perspective, I've been rethinking the adventuring experience, shifting the PCs to the fringes; not necessarily evil, but living outside the constraints of civilization. I'm looking at all these old modules I obsessed about over the years from this new perspective. 

Of course, the first modge to get this treatment is going to be Vill. of Homm. 

Here's the setup: After backing the wrong side in a gangster turf war in Dyvers, the party of societal renegades has fled to the outlaw haven of Nulb. Once there, they meet with the boss of the town who sees that they're a cut above the typical ruffians around Nulb and offers them a gig: a weird new cult in the swamps is seeking mercenaries to provide some advanced professional services. The cult lives in a ruined keep near a hamlet some six miles away called Hommlet. 

The PCs go to the moathouse and have to find there way through to Lareth's joint. Once there, The Beautiful One tells them the job: one of his agents in town (Hommlet) has been arrested and is being held in the tower of the New Masters. It is feared that the agent had on him a scarab that is a holy symbol of the cult and can be used to identify cult members. Lareth needs the party to enter town under guise of traveling adventurers, find a way to infiltrate the tower and retrieve the scarab and release the agent. Or silence him if that is easier.  

Here's how it turned out: the gang went to town and, after some recon, snuck into the tower while R&B were out for the evening. When they got to Rannos in his cell, he claimed that Gremag--who was not incarcerated--ratted him out. The gang took it upon themselves to show Gremag what the cult does to snitches. 

During the ensuing unpleasantries, Gremag insisted that it was Rannos who did the ratting, but it didn't go over well. Unbeknownst to any of them, the real rat was the spy Rannos hired to pose as a laborer at the castle. He had been caught snooping around by Burne's Badgers and quickly confessed to working for the traders, mostly because the pay was shit.

Anyway, that was my first time running an outlaw module, I'm working on a few more; 10 points if you can guess which classic modge is next.

 

 

Classic Railroad Adventuring: How to Roll Dice on a Train

After many days in the wilderness, hounded relentlessly by the vociferous demons of Blogger OCD, I came across a railroad track and managed to hop on a passing freight train. I shared a boxcar with a couple of old school, Depression-era hobos; they showed me how to make a proper bindle and I took them through V. of Hommlet. I didn't actually bring a copy of the modge when I fled my home so I had to run it from memory; I'm pretty sure I got all the encounters right--which just means that I am a nutjob.

This all came about because the hobos--am I going to get in trouble for calling them that?--saw my collection of D&D books. One of the dudes apparently follows the BX Blackrazor blog because he mentioned JB's post on how he runs AD&D combat. He asked if I followed similar rules. I started to explain my house'd version but, eyeing my collection of hand-carved cedar dice, they asked if we could just play. 

Anyway, doing this forced me to codify my own AD&D combat rules which I now present to you, bored reader:

Surprise party

In a post a couple years back I famously, and rather embarrassingly, revealed my deep-seeded ignorance of the AD&D surprise rules. But you know what, up yers cuz' I like my version better. Each side rolls for surprise; if one side rolls a 1 or 2 (usual indicators of surprise) then subtract the die roll from the other side's die roll, this indicates how many segments they are surprised. A 0 result equals mutual surprise--nobody does anything for zero segments--a negative result indicates the other side is the only one experiencing surprise. Except I'm capping the surprise party at 3 segments like the table on page 103 of the PHB misleadingly hints, because otherwise there is the potential of up to 5 segments of surprise and that seems a bit extreme.  

Also, I'm eliminating the 30' surprise limit on the grounds that you could have a situation where a party enters a 40' x 40' goblin barracks and achieves surprise on all the goblins within 30' but the ones along the far wall are not surprised. You would be rolling initiative against folks who are 40 feet away while all the nearby schmucks stand like pawns on a chessboard. 

Initiative

Standard d6 for each side, no Dex bonus.

In case of a tie, whoever rolls higher on their melee attack roll (raw d20 before bonuses) gets in the first telling blow. If the d20 rolls are equal, then the strikes are truly simultaneous. This should only matter if one of the combatants lays down a death blow on the other.

Movement before melee

It always struck me as a tad preposterous that, in a one minute melee round, you could only move ten feet--not quite 3.5 strides for most humans--and still have enough time to engage in melee. Back in the day we house-ruled that you could move up to half of your move and still roll your 20-sider. It served us well as kids and I'm sticking with it as an old man.  

Multiple attacks

You've got three attacks per round? They all happen at the same time; before your opponent if you win initiative, after if you lose. I could make the effort to internalize the variables like other, more practiced DMs might, but I'm not interested enough to bother.

In the case of an initiative tie, those attack rolls which beat the opponent's hit first.  

Missile Fire Rate

Unlike multiple melee attacks, I do feel like missile fire rate is worth parsing out because you have to take time to reload. Generally, darts take at least three segs to reload and aim, arrows and daggers take four segments at a minimum; everything else goes off with the regular initiative roll. 

 

Exception: if you spent your last round, or part thereof, preparing to launch you can go during the first segment, or any segment thereafter. 

 

Giants hurling boulders 

AD&D rules say that Dex does not apply to hurled boulders. I'm going to commit some blasphemy here and say that Gygax got this exactly wrong. I don't care what kind of armor you're wearing, you get hit by a massive boulder, you're crushed. Your best chance of avoiding damage is to not get hit. Therefore, use only Dex and magic bonuses to determine AC from boulder attacks, e.g. Wismodolum the Gnome fighter/illusionist has a 16 Dex and +2 chain mail. Wismo gets to use the +2 bonus but not the chainmail armor value; so AC is 8, plus 2 more for dex = AC 6. Giants are also -4 to hit gnomes so that little bastard effectively has an AC of 2 vs Giant-tossed boulders. 

 

Anyway, we made it through the moathouse and the Lareth encounter before getting chased off the train somewhere near Tierra del Fuego. 

On the run

I've taken shelter for the night in a cave on the lee side of a mountain ridge. The wind and rain are howling outside, not even the Demons of Blogger OCD could make any progress in this weather. Or at least that's my hope.

This respite gives me a chance to take stock of my situation. Before I fled my home I managed to grab my pack and fill it with all the essentials for a nerd on the run: 

✔ Charger--hopefully I'll be able to find an outlet

✔ Bedroll--obvee 

✔ Utility knife--essential for carving dice from the heartwood of a fallen cedar tree

✔ AD&D DMG & PHB--I should be able to cobble together a decent AD&D campaign

✔ Halberd--a good pole arm is always handy in the wild

✔ Collected works of Graham Greene--been meaning to get to these for years, this could be my chance

Beyond that, I've got a can opener, the Marvel Superheroes box set, DCC Classics core rules, the Castles & Crusades books, 12 packets of Ramen noodles, Shadowdark, Mothership, GURPS, a sack of potatoes, Cyberpunk, ICRPG, Tooth brush, Mork Borg, a few dozen issues of Dragon magazine and a Car Wars battle mat. 

Lest you think me an entirely impractical traveler, I did also bring a book on cheese making. I've started making a wheel of parmesan.

I'm running out of juice on my phone I'll send an update once if I ever get back to civilization. 

Fuuuuuuu...

 

...ck. I blew it. I had a crummy filler post ready to go and everything. All I had to do was hit the ol' "publish" button at some point before midnight yesterday and I would have secured the new year against the dark forces that are now hunting me down. I can hear their baleful call in the distance. They're getting closer. I have to keep moving. 

I could have been sitting at home, enjoying the company of my family, my dog at my side, in front of the warm glow of the television. Instead, I'm on the run in this cold wintry landscape, pursued by demons intent on my demise. 

If only I'd managed that sixth post for the year 2025.

How to Play AD&D Part XVII: Hirelings--Sages

Something weird was going on in Gary's campaign that compelled him to write 20 paragraphs of rules for running sages in AD&D. 

First off we have tables for determining how much knowledge your local sage has. Briefly, each sage has a major field of knowledge, say Humanoids & Giantkind. Within this major field, a sage will have 2-4 Special categories--rolled on a random table of course. So your H&G major could have a specialization in the biology and languages of Humanoids and giants.   

We also learn that Sages require significant space: a useful sage must have living quarters, a library, workroom, and a study, each room to be at least 200 sf. So 800 sf at the minimum. Not terribly huge, but why must every sage have a separate study and library? And what the heck goes on in a history major's "workroom"? More importantly, why do we care? We just wanted to find out if it's true that orcs have forked penises, what do we care how big the sage's house is? Stick with me, Gary has a reason.

Next we learn about the characteristics of a sage: for instance sages roll 1d8 for their STR and add 7, which means their range is 8-15, which is actually stronger than the norm. Surprising given the sedentary nature of their labors.  They also have exceptionally high Int--makes sense--and Wis--makes less sense--but shit Con and Cha--also makes sense I suppose if we're going to generalize and stereotype, 70s style. 

They also have access to spells up to levels 3-6; not bad considering they are not actually members of a spell casting class. Gygax equates certain fields to certain class of spells--Nature studying sages would have druid spells, supernatural studies indicate MUs, and experts on the physical universe and/or deviant sex would have clerical spells. 

Also, sages have 8d4 hit points. Not bad.   

There are also rules for when PCs hire sages as employees--as opposed to just asking for a consultation. Remember those space requirements mentioned a few paragraphs ago? This is where they come into play: as an employer, you are now required to provide the sage with adequate space to ply its craft. 

This raises the question of who the heck was hiring sages as permanent employees? I honestly can't fathom a reason why anyone would want to do this. Well, it wasn't spell casters because only fighters, rangers, paladins, thieves, and assassins may hire a sage as an employee. Apparently the Brotherhood of Sages (an actual thing) won't allow them to take a permanent gig with a wizard. 

Further, sages will only accept permanent employment offers that are lifelong! You can't just hire a sage for a year or two or ten; once you hire a smarty-pants know-it-all sage, they're on your payroll until they kick off this mortal coil. How many sages with this arrangement end up getting murdered by their patron once they are no longer needed?

Consulting with a sage, however, is open to anyone, spell caster or not. However, Sage-work is a tiring business--sages require 1 day of relaxing and recuperating for every 3 days spent answering a question. And such employment cannot last more than a week or the sage will then be unable to answer any further questions for at least one month!  How the heck did these chumps get through grad school?

All this tells us that finding expert advice was such a valuable commodity in Old Man Gygax's campaigns back in the day that he felt the need to create elaborate rules for sages dispensing knowledge. But you know what else this tells us? It tells us that somebody in Lake Geneva was gaining such an undue advantage from these sage rules and Gygax had to shut that crap down!

 

Another Hommlet Podcast

A Hommcast? Anyway, the latest is from the folks over at Mighty Deeds, which is, I believe, a DCC actual play podcast. Season 3 of which sees our heroes venturing into Hommleton. They continue on to the Temple of Ephemeral Edicts, but they spend about 16 episodes in the village/moathouse.

Strangely, even though they're using DCC rules--published by Goodman Games--they seem to be using the 4e Version of Hommlet, not the Goodman Games reprint. Probably because they didn't want to take a out a second mortgage to get the Goodman Games tomes. But the DM--or whatever they're called in DCC--keeps dissing Uncle Gary's flavor text even though the text he is reading is often not from the original T1. 

Linked here:

Mighty Deeds: Hommlet podcast 

Happy St. Cuthbert's Day!

Today is the saint's day of the original cuddy, St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel! Although the real world Cuthbert seems not to have used a cudgel at all; in this photo of one of his many miracles, he is clearly armed with a sword. If you find yourself near Hommlet today, swing by for the festivities.

St. Cuddy invents the 2x4.