#tabletop rpg

[everlostscribe]

About to celebrate the 1-year anniversary of KPop Demon Hunters by running a one-shot tabletop rpg session in the KPDH world.

The three girls of Any Card are about to make their world debut, performing their first single on KPop Weekly with Ken & Kwan.

I have a hunch that everything is not going to go smoothly.

[vintagerpg]

Like World of Greyhawk, Greyhawk Ruins (1990) is a bit of a half-measure.

The ruins of Castle Greyhawk were the under-construction megadungeon where Gary Gygax playtested Dungeons & Dragons (there are actually two, Rob Kuntz developed and ran the second version so Gygax could play). This haphazard thing, created at the frantic rate of one level a week, was never published and, even if Gygax wanted to, was likely unpublishable as a game resource (it would be nice to have it as a historical document, though). Gygax mentioned the dungeon every so often, but obliquely. Three modules — Dungeonland, The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror and Isle of the Ape — take place on demi-planes that were accessible to Gygax’s players via portals contained in the dungeon, but the published versions downplay that connection. After Gygax left TSR, the parody of the dungeon, published as Castle Greyhawk, emerged, to the satisfaction of no one.

Greyhawk Ruins is the first serious attempt at creating a playable version of the legendary dungeon and, even though it has been mostly overlooked, I think it does an admirable job cobbling together the many hints Gygax made about its contents into a workable whole. There are really three dungeons, one underneath the ruins of the castle’s three partially remaining towers, though there are plenty of connections between the three shafts. To cram all the detail into 86 pages, the text is vanishingly small; a heap of color-coded map (each shift denoting a 5’ decrease in elevation) and some new monster sheets rounds it out. I quite like the clarity of the maps.

The thing I find most interesting about this whole thing is that in this moment, Greyhawk was getting more serious, with modules incrementally paving the way to From the Ashes, the setting’s grimmest point. The thing is, the old school Castle Greyhawk, which this module is at pains to emulate, is not serious, at least, not in the same way. Rather, it’s rather unhinged, with bizarre spaces and incongruous situations. It doesn’t have groaner jokes, but rather, as I mentioned yesterday, it leaves plenty of joke material laying around for the players to do with what they will. It doesn’t really surprise me that this book didn’t get much attention at the time, because it was so out of step, but it does make me a bit sad.

Fred Fields delivers a puzzling cover. I feel like I should know who the woman is, but I haven’t a clue. Her pose seems awkward to me, her desire to pick up a rock inscrutable. This is a view of the castle approach, the falcon statue is mentioned in the text (as a feature from a dungeon room inexplicably teleported to its current resting place). It’s fine, I guess, I just feel that a grander cover is in order. Interiors by Tom Baxa, Mark Nelson and Dave Simons, and I quite like all of them, they feel suitably old school.

[nitro-starlight]

Hello, im looking for a dm and other players right now it me and another guy, and he said we start in a prison that all he told.

Im a bringer btw

[break-rpg]

In today’s entry I’m happy to introduce the Henshin Hero, a calling based on a variety of transforming heroes you might see in anime and tok

[vintagerpg]

WG12: Vale of the Mage (1989) is a jarring return to form after the three previous modules. The difference is immediately apparent just in the heft of the book — this is a 64-page booklet, a big full color map and a cover screen. Compare that to the 32 pages and nothing else of the “funny” scenarios.

The first chunk of the book is a sourcebook for the title region, one of the few spots mentioned in World of Greyhawk that was mysterious enough that I recall folks being excited when this showed up on shelves, though some material on the Vale and its inhabitants appeared in Greyhawk Adventures. The titular mage is a somewhat evil but reasonable fellow who is working toward becoming a shade. His best (only?) friend is Tysiln San, the drow woman on the cover. She hails from the Vault of the Drow and it is interesting how different she is both from the original (cartoonish) depiction of Drow and the newer, more elaborately developed Drow of Forgotten Realms. Chaotic Neutral and loyal and loving to the Mage, she seems more of a cultural outlier than Drizzt.

The rest of the book is the scenario, which is basically a hexcrawl through the Vale hunting necromancers who failed in a coup attempt and fled. The idea is to either eliminate them or beat them to the Mage and convince him to deal them justice. This is mostly an excuse to get entangled in emergent adventures in the Vale.

One of my favorite bits is a new monster, the Grist, also called a True Gargoyle, immediately recognizable because they have four arms and permanently attached wings. They feel like a direct refutation the dopey gargoyles of Gargoyle.

Cover by Elmore, interiors by Valeries Valusek. The whole visual presentation feels like a sea change that says Greyhawk going forward will be different. And it was (though, ironically, it got very dark, very fast, and a lot of people didn’t like that either!).

[haveyouplayedthisttrpg]

The story about my massive Monster of the Week one shot in Paris with something like 6-7 (sigh) players

At the time I was still young in ttrpg years and lived in...Paris, the year Notre Dame burned (this will be relevant)

The time I had gm'ed could be counted on one hand with fingers left over

I discovered Paris Pla'jdr, a summer event by ttrpg fans, every sunday ( weather permitting), they would gather at a park, picnic, and play games ( open event)

And because sometimes I forget about anxiety, i decided to gm a game of MotW for strangers

The premise, adapted to the secret agency chosen by the group, is thus

Notre dame didn't burn by accident, there was a protection in its wall, under its floor that protect the city of Paris from supernatural evilness. Someone went there and remove it, took it for themselves.

The adventure started in media res with the gremlins in the airport at night. Why ? to show how it works, and have some cool shots for the character, like a movie prelude. ANd also because gremlins are very well known and so are their weakness.

the Agency realised there was a problem, there was a lot of supernatural happenings, more than should be.

The players had then hooks to various monsters in parts of the city to investigate. they didn't know which one was what, but the choices, again, were, gargoyles, siren in the Seine, golem, and the one they went for, mummy in the museum ( there was actually an egyptology exhibition at the time)

The haitian vampire whose name i don't remember but they were in the bestiary for MotW was the mysterious shopkeeper with infos. Their particular lore was that they are collectors and hide their hearts in a chest. The monster player recognized the sign of vampireness but was out of the shop so....did a lot of gesture trough the glass and when the group left, the vampire went and took the garlic from the monster player hands and took a bite as a power move. And because i am a brat

They found out that the one responsible was also responsible for various misfortune for the pcs, according to their background, like the arrest of the criminal, and the transformation of the monster. Motivation

And of course the confrontation had to happen....in the catacombs. They won, but were also divided on how to deal with the artefact taken from Notre dame.

The vampire came and was revealed as the.....president of the agency. because i loved the antagonistic relationship between him and the group

and also suddenly unified the group that was divided, weird

and that was the end of multiple hours of Monster of the Week in Paris

[vintagerpg]

WG11: Puppets (1989) is another painful “Greyhawk” scenario that adds nothing to the setting and is filled with groaners. There is a leprechaun named Freddy McKruger who is looking for his friend Jason. That’s about the level of humor we’re looking at here.

This thing is cobbled together from two RPGA tournament scenarios, one of which was originally set in Ravens Bluff (which would eventually be incorporated into Forgotten Realms, not Greyhawk). I think this is also true of Child’s Play and Gargoyle, and probably goes a long way toward explaining why these are trying so hard to be funny and feel so out of place for the setting. Honestly, the second half of this one, which involves animated Puppet Master-style puppet thieves, could maybe be worked into something decent. But out of three modules, that’s honestly all that’s worth mentioning.

The thing with jokes in games is that you can’t write them down and expect them to land. Freddy McKruger was possibly a funny quip on the fly at a convention game, but as soon as it got written down, it became the stupidest parody joke ever. Laughter is a staple at the table, but you have to let it be free. I am always trying to incorporate the stupidest stuff to get laughs, but it’s for the table, not posterity. All these joke scenarios are trying so hard to be funny when what they should be doing is trying to give the players the material they need to be funny.

This Clyde Caldwell cover has got to be one of the most recycled pieces of D&D art. It debuted on the cover of Dragon Magazine #80 (1983) and also appeared on the cover of Magic Encyclopedia Volume Two. I am not going to dive into the archive to be certain, but I am pretty sure it also shows up as a color plate in multiple other books. Interior art by Allen Nunis, whose WEG Star Wars art I adore. Here, I find him infuriating because I feel like all his faces are meant to refer to people I don’t know (TSR staff? People tied to the bad jokes?).