Trading Card Cases & Outdoor Encounters III
I ordered some trading card cases for my various decks, such as the two Outdoor Encounter decks that I have. Looking at it though, isn’t it odd, the amount of space left? It’s almost exactly 2/3rds full.
As if there’s room enough for just one more deck. If only I had Outdoor Encounters III.
So, heck with it, I got the deck. It fits perfectly with just enough room to make it manageable.
Outdoor Encounters III includes a new kind of card: locations. It’s kind of odd to switch up and add a new card type in the third and last. I’m wondering if they ran out of ideas for the normal encounters or if they just had a brainstorm and decided to add them. They fit well, though, and don’t seem at all out of place. Once shuffled together they certainly don’t feel anomalous.
Random dungeon entrances are great. I personally love the idea that dungeons are so common you can just stumble across entrances like in a Legend of Zelda game(at least the ancient ones I grew up playing). Have some dungeons prepped for when the PCs come across one, or use all the various cards sold by Philip Reed to randomly generate one on the go! (Or using your system of choice. As I mentioned I didn’t opt for the dungeon generation cards because I have random dungeon gen stuff coming out my ass backwards. Choosing which one to use or finding a way to cobble them all together would be a greater and more amusing challenge for me.)
I also like that the locations are given the standard “hostile,” “indifferent,” “friendly” labels just like encounters with monsters/NPCs. They also include a fourth label, “abandoned,” reflecting that it’s less than indifferent - which could go either way. I’m just guessing that’s a difference - I’m not really sure how a strange outcropping with a dungeon door is “indifferent,” compared to another dungeon entrance which is “hostile,” or a glowing pyramid filled with corpses and treasure or an obelisk carved with learnable spells being “abandoned.” I would think perhaps the pyramid would be “indifferent” since it has treasure, but also a chance of afflicting PCs with a disease. At any rate, these labels don’t matter too much to sit and split hairs about the differences. The text description is what’s important, the label simply being a quick reference.
Reed has a specialized box for such cards as a Kickstarter, which I supported as in a previous post. I ordered that and a number of other decks. Whether I move these three to that one, or use that one for others, we’ll see when they come in. Perhaps I’ll post an update with images of the card box after construction, the new decks and so on. Apparently the decks are in and Reed is waiting for the actual card boxes, which I imagine will be in soon.
One thing I’ll say, his Kickstarters go from funded to product-in-your-mailbox fast.
Never would have imagined way back when I was messing around with his 4C RPG(a Marvel Supers retroclone, and a public domain system like ours!) that all these years later I’d be spending on all these other products, but what can I say, the man produces quality.
While we continue to proofread and pretty up “the Hypogeum of Hate,” our upcoming free adventure module set in a fantasy Celtic Scotland, we’re looking for playtesters to play another upcoming module, “the Blind Leading the Blind,” set on a tiny island in the same area. Fae, fomorians, wild enchanted items, cultural clashes, conspiracies and ancient secrets abound on the Enistis, beginning with this lost dungeon the PCs uncover. As they discover clues hidden throughout, should they survive long enough, they will realize that the dungeon was not lost but sealed away in the hopes that those who built it would not rise and bring terror to the entire island. Because this was the stronghold of the Soliform Order of the Knights of the Lord’s Keep, who brought back the dark secrets of immortality they had found and used them - until the day the forces of Order shut them away, secretly, in the dark. There they wait for the PCs to free them - just as their book of prophecy foretold…
One thing players liked about the original version of this adventure when I ran it long ago was that it contained almost no “intelligent” monsters. Giant insects, slimes, aberrations, rodents, bats, hazardous plants and other unintelligent but dangerous creatures gave the module a more disquieting and unnerving feel, driving home the emptiness and desolation. I hope you all will like this as well, and that it makes the intelligent monsters, once PCs unleash them, all the more frightening.
There are various “paths” PCs can take to complete the adventure, which could give the module an amount of replayability. As there are items meant to help with different scenarios and situations within, and these can be found in several orders(or not at all), it almost has a “Mega Man” like number of choices, should the PCs figure everything out, that could make it fun to replay to try tackling these challenges in different orders, or even “shuffling” items and perhaps monsters to produce such replayability. Simplify the system and you might even have a board game - anything’s possible! You think this is a good idea? You like it? Contact me! Think it’s dumb? Let me know!
If anyone is interested in playtesting - by participating in play through the Penny Thought Exchange Discord server(and maybe Roll20?) or by running it yourself for your own friends, please contact me here. Send a PM if you wish. Thanks!
And thanks to Philip Reed for the many years of high-quality, cost-effective releases! It was the 4C System that helped me rediscover the old Marvel system, which I hadn’t played in forever.
