Tuesday, October 4, 2016
Look what I got in the mail today!
My copy of Crypts and Things Remastered arrived today! Now if I can just find some people to play it with....
Saturday, June 25, 2016
DCC RPG in the City of Lankhmar on Free RPG day!
Last weekend I ran DCC RPG at the Orem, Utah Dragon’s Keep for Free RPG Day. Only one of my two players showed but fortunately for me, I managed to recruit two other GMs whose didn’t have any players show up so we played with three players and three characters: A wizard, a warrior and a thief. One of the other GMs was my friend Joe that I play with in a 5th Edition game.
The adventure starts with the characters waking up in a dank and dark dungeon somewhere in Lankhmar, the The City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. The characters have find a way to escape and fight their way out of dungeon. Everyone had a blast despite a TPK at the end which came down to a single die roll. (If the warrior would have hit the evil sorcerer with the tendril arm, he probably would have killed him and the party would have survived. But…he didn’t and the evil sorcerer kept on rolling spectacular spell checks and the wizard was the last two fall as his body was torn to pieces by magic missiles.) The people upstairs could hear us cheering, lamenting and laughing.
The module was DCC RPG’s version of Lankhmar, a city that has been adapted for fantasy RPGs for over 30 years. My first exposure to the city of Lankhmar, the world of Nehwon and the two adventurers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods book. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were the invention of legendary writer Fritz Leiber. If you haven’t heard of him, Google his name and go out and find his work, at least if you are into Sword and Sorcery literature.
The adventure starts with the characters waking up in a dank and dark dungeon somewhere in Lankhmar, the The City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes. The characters have find a way to escape and fight their way out of dungeon. Everyone had a blast despite a TPK at the end which came down to a single die roll. (If the warrior would have hit the evil sorcerer with the tendril arm, he probably would have killed him and the party would have survived. But…he didn’t and the evil sorcerer kept on rolling spectacular spell checks and the wizard was the last two fall as his body was torn to pieces by magic missiles.) The people upstairs could hear us cheering, lamenting and laughing.
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| Imprisoned! |
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| Escape! |
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| A door! |
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| Killing the jailer |
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| TPK. |
The module was DCC RPG’s version of Lankhmar, a city that has been adapted for fantasy RPGs for over 30 years. My first exposure to the city of Lankhmar, the world of Nehwon and the two adventurers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser was in the 1st Edition Deities and Demigods book. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were the invention of legendary writer Fritz Leiber. If you haven’t heard of him, Google his name and go out and find his work, at least if you are into Sword and Sorcery literature.
Friday, May 13, 2016
Crypts and Things Remastered Beta Rules actually play.
Back in February, I conducted a one shot play test of the new Crypts and Things Remastered rules by D101 Games. I have run two other successful campaigns using the original Crypts and Things in the past, I was a Kickstarter supporter for the new rule set and I was curious to try out the beta rules
I managed to put together a group to play with the new rule set and generated one character for each class in the game: Barbarian, Thief, Fighter, and Sorcerer. Adam (who played in my first Crypts and Things campaign) played the Barbarian, Jade played the Thief, Brandon (who played in my second Crypts and Things campaign) and David played the fighter. I came up with a quick dungeon crawl where the adventurers where trying to find a thief that had disappeared with a sizable amount of treasure.
I don’t really remember the specifics of the events from the game but the party overcame a ghoul, some skeletons and they encountered an insane immortal and a demon. As the barbarian, Adam when full dark side when he sacrificed the insane immortal and freed the demon while the rest of the party (rightfully so) fled.
All in all, we had a good time and it gave me a chance to check out the change to the rules. The Skill system has been more clearly defined, the magic systems have changed somewhat in that in the original Crypts and Things game White magic was safe and now it isn’t. White magic is downright dangerous although using Black magic still can lead to madness and corruption. Also, saving throws have been replaced with the Pressing Your Luck mechanic. With Pressing Your Luck, you can also do a lot of other things as well such as recovering a spell or avoiding a death blow. All in all, the game is a little bit deadlier than it was which is OK with me.
As a note, my friend David is David J. West, a published writer of horror and dark fantasy/sword and sorcery stories. My personal favorite of his yarns is Whispers of the Goddess which is a historical fantasy that is set against the backdrop of the sack of Constantinople which occurred during the the 4th Crusade. It is based on an actual event where a mob tore down a statue of the goddess Athena. It think that Robert E. Howard would have enjoyed it and if you are reading this blog, I think that you will too.
Here is his Amazon page
http://www.amazon.com/David-J.-West/e/B004AIN4W4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_3
Here is his blog page
http://david-j-west.blogspot.com/
Here are some pictures from the adventure
I managed to put together a group to play with the new rule set and generated one character for each class in the game: Barbarian, Thief, Fighter, and Sorcerer. Adam (who played in my first Crypts and Things campaign) played the Barbarian, Jade played the Thief, Brandon (who played in my second Crypts and Things campaign) and David played the fighter. I came up with a quick dungeon crawl where the adventurers where trying to find a thief that had disappeared with a sizable amount of treasure.
I don’t really remember the specifics of the events from the game but the party overcame a ghoul, some skeletons and they encountered an insane immortal and a demon. As the barbarian, Adam when full dark side when he sacrificed the insane immortal and freed the demon while the rest of the party (rightfully so) fled.
All in all, we had a good time and it gave me a chance to check out the change to the rules. The Skill system has been more clearly defined, the magic systems have changed somewhat in that in the original Crypts and Things game White magic was safe and now it isn’t. White magic is downright dangerous although using Black magic still can lead to madness and corruption. Also, saving throws have been replaced with the Pressing Your Luck mechanic. With Pressing Your Luck, you can also do a lot of other things as well such as recovering a spell or avoiding a death blow. All in all, the game is a little bit deadlier than it was which is OK with me.
As a note, my friend David is David J. West, a published writer of horror and dark fantasy/sword and sorcery stories. My personal favorite of his yarns is Whispers of the Goddess which is a historical fantasy that is set against the backdrop of the sack of Constantinople which occurred during the the 4th Crusade. It is based on an actual event where a mob tore down a statue of the goddess Athena. It think that Robert E. Howard would have enjoyed it and if you are reading this blog, I think that you will too.
Here is his Amazon page
http://www.amazon.com/David-J.-West/e/B004AIN4W4/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_3
Here is his blog page
http://david-j-west.blogspot.com/
Here are some pictures from the adventure
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| Sorcerer character sheet. |
 |
| Thief character sheet. I could have sworn that I took a picture of the Barbarian and Fighter minis. |
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| The Ghoul Bride that the party found eating the missing theif |
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| Attack of the Spider |
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| The party battles animated statues |
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| Watch your step |
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| The barbarian goes darkside and sacrifices the old insane immortal by pushing him into the demon summing circle. |
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| Everyone else flees the demon, which is a good idea. |
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
Crypts and Things Remastered Beta Test
This Thursday I will be running a brief Crypts and Things session were we will check out the Beta Version of Crypts and Things Remastered. I am preparing a deadly crypt for the adventures to explore.
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| The Catacombs of the Scarlet Sorcerer |
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Crypts and Things: Expedition into Darkness and Death.
I adapted this for Crypts and Things from the adventure “Pale Shadow” from Beasts of the Dominions for Beasts and Barbarians which you can purchase here.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/104616/Beasts-of-the-Dominions?manufacturers_id=3554
After a relatively uneventful trip, the Blood Bride arrived at the island designated on the map that was recovered from the wizard/silk merchant’s tower. Anaya took a strong interest in Raelic the Theif but Kord warned him to stay away from the Amazon captain as he believed that she had fangs in her vagina.
The crew disembarked and found a few abandoned villages. Khale Roley III noticed that there were a number of amulets that were hung about the abandoned huts that were supposed to ward of demons. He wondered how effective those amulets had been in the people of the village were no longer there….
It wasn’t long after landing that the hostility between the two factions of the crew turned violent. One of Kord’s men murdered on of Anaya’s men with a mace and one of Kord’s men vanished soon after. Chantel examined the tracks around the missing sailor and it appeared that he had vanished into thin air as his tracks just seemed to stop….
Eventually, the expedition found an abandoned and ancient city in the center of the island. A high wall had long ago crumbed in certain parts so the adventures had no trouble entering the city. The ruins were mainly towers with no entries on the lower levels. The doors and windows were often hundreds of feet off of the surface of the city. Whoever had built the city did not spend much of their time at ground level…
Both Kord and Anaya sent men off to explore the city in an attempt to find treasure while the main group headed towards the city center. A massive tower awaited the party. Its walls were cracked and it was easy to gain entry. At the base level was a hideous idol stained with long dried blood. The idol was searched and two items were recovered: A bronze crown with a serpent’s head and bastard sword that was made of a shiny black metal. Anaya was furious that her crew had come all this way just for these two items. By this time it was nightfall and that was when the screams began….
The screams did not prevent the war between Kord and Anaya coming to head and swords were drawn and blood spilled. Ultimately, the party and Kord’s pirates prevailed but not before discovering that the black bastard sword compelled the wielder, in this case Raelic to kill at least one sentient being a day. Moreover, the sword killed most creatures and people that it struck almost instantly.
The remaining crew of the Blood Bride were holed up in the Tower while something or somethings was outside attacking the crew members that had been sent out to explore and loot the city. Not one of them returned.
The crew decided to leave in the morning but they would not be able to make it back to the beach before night fell. When the night fell, so did the Sky Demons: creatures that looked like they were park bat and part human and all nightmare.
The crew had to fight their way through the ruins and then through the jungle to finally make their way back to the beach and the row boats where they managed to make their way back to the ship.
Upon arriving, the crew that had been left at the ship looked like they might kill the survivors as it was obvious that Anaya was no longer with the crew. It was then that Chantel decided to put on the serpent crown. She commanded the crew to obey her. They did. (I also had Kevin roll a saving throw which I seem to remember that he missed and lost some sanity. Such is the nature of magic in Crypts and Things)
.
The trip back was uneventful…until Deep Ones, creatures from the ocean, attacked and attempted to steal the crown and the sword. The Deep Ones were driven off but not before they managed to take the crown…
Finally the party returned to Jalizar to continue their adventures….
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/104616/Beasts-of-the-Dominions?manufacturers_id=3554
After a relatively uneventful trip, the Blood Bride arrived at the island designated on the map that was recovered from the wizard/silk merchant’s tower. Anaya took a strong interest in Raelic the Theif but Kord warned him to stay away from the Amazon captain as he believed that she had fangs in her vagina.
The crew disembarked and found a few abandoned villages. Khale Roley III noticed that there were a number of amulets that were hung about the abandoned huts that were supposed to ward of demons. He wondered how effective those amulets had been in the people of the village were no longer there….
It wasn’t long after landing that the hostility between the two factions of the crew turned violent. One of Kord’s men murdered on of Anaya’s men with a mace and one of Kord’s men vanished soon after. Chantel examined the tracks around the missing sailor and it appeared that he had vanished into thin air as his tracks just seemed to stop….
Eventually, the expedition found an abandoned and ancient city in the center of the island. A high wall had long ago crumbed in certain parts so the adventures had no trouble entering the city. The ruins were mainly towers with no entries on the lower levels. The doors and windows were often hundreds of feet off of the surface of the city. Whoever had built the city did not spend much of their time at ground level…
Both Kord and Anaya sent men off to explore the city in an attempt to find treasure while the main group headed towards the city center. A massive tower awaited the party. Its walls were cracked and it was easy to gain entry. At the base level was a hideous idol stained with long dried blood. The idol was searched and two items were recovered: A bronze crown with a serpent’s head and bastard sword that was made of a shiny black metal. Anaya was furious that her crew had come all this way just for these two items. By this time it was nightfall and that was when the screams began….
The screams did not prevent the war between Kord and Anaya coming to head and swords were drawn and blood spilled. Ultimately, the party and Kord’s pirates prevailed but not before discovering that the black bastard sword compelled the wielder, in this case Raelic to kill at least one sentient being a day. Moreover, the sword killed most creatures and people that it struck almost instantly.
The remaining crew of the Blood Bride were holed up in the Tower while something or somethings was outside attacking the crew members that had been sent out to explore and loot the city. Not one of them returned.
The crew decided to leave in the morning but they would not be able to make it back to the beach before night fell. When the night fell, so did the Sky Demons: creatures that looked like they were park bat and part human and all nightmare.
The crew had to fight their way through the ruins and then through the jungle to finally make their way back to the beach and the row boats where they managed to make their way back to the ship.
Upon arriving, the crew that had been left at the ship looked like they might kill the survivors as it was obvious that Anaya was no longer with the crew. It was then that Chantel decided to put on the serpent crown. She commanded the crew to obey her. They did. (I also had Kevin roll a saving throw which I seem to remember that he missed and lost some sanity. Such is the nature of magic in Crypts and Things)
.
The trip back was uneventful…until Deep Ones, creatures from the ocean, attacked and attempted to steal the crown and the sword. The Deep Ones were driven off but not before they managed to take the crown…
Finally the party returned to Jalizar to continue their adventures….
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