Post by burke on Feb 9, 2013 17:40:18 GMT -6
Hi,
I've been inactive on the board for several years, but today I started a new OD&D/Searcher's of the Unknown campaign and thought I'd share it.
The campaign is called Tales of the Wendigo and is inspired among others by Game of Thrones (the tv-series), Borderlands (the computer game), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (also a computer game), Doomsday (the movie) and of course the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft. This is the fluff I used to sell it to my players:
I customized Searchers of the Unknown a bit to fit my current tastes and the campaign. All weapons do d6 damage, hit points are rolled with d6, ascending AC (heresy, I know) and other bits and pieces. Since the characters are prisoners when the game begins, their few belongings are randomly decided. Anyone who is interested can have a look at the rules document.
I got three volunteers for the first session and these are the character's they rolled up:
To evade the raiders and slavers that roam the environs near the wall, our heroes set out for the wilderness in the far north, following the trail called the Dragon's Tooth Road (named after the mysterious, jagged pillars lining the path north). After a few weeks of travel and near starvation, the party is set upon by a most fierce blizzard that does not let up. The wind seems to have a will of its own, changing direction from one moment to the next, and sometimes a disturbing ululation can be heard. Almost having given up all hope of survival, they spot a light not far ahead in the night.
Their miraculous rescue turns out to be a man trying to find his privy in the blizzard. He is utterly horrified at their sight and runs screaming for the nearest house. The PC's have stumbled upon Hogarth's End, a small trading village and the northernmost settlement beyond the wall (not counting the settlements of the native inuits of course).
The party is the subject of much attention at the only tavern (and brothel) in the village. Apparently they are the first visitors since the blizzard started a few weeks ago. The villagers are quick to blame a previous group of adventurers who apparently woke the Wendigo in their search of forbidden treasure. The PC's are heavily discouraged from trying to follow in their footsteps.
Later that night the PC's are approached by the tavern keeper, Barnabas, who is also the de facto leader of the village. Barnabas confesses that he played his part in the previous expedition (in the hope of treasure) and that he is afraid that whatever was woken is here to stay unless it is defeated or driven away. Of course he wishes the PC's to investigate and promises supplies and ample rewards. How could they turn this down?
Early next morning the PC's set off in search of Qillaq, the native guide of the previous adventurers, who is now hiding in a nearby ice cave to avoid the wrath of the villagers. The blizzard has calmed a little and their travels are made easier by their newly procured snow shoes. They find Qillaq hiding under a pile of snow and finally manage to threaten him enough to quide them to the site. The eccentric old man seems to be deadly afraid of whatever is out there.
After a few hours of travel the party comes across the frozen corpse of a Caribou, it looks like a pin cushion, having been impaled by a dozen, long, icicles. Qillaq becomes unhinged and pleads for them to turn back, but to no avail. Instead Bear decides to take the Caribous along as a light snack as they continue onward.
A few hours later they come upon a valley that seems to have been dug out from the snow. At the bottom, three, tall, stone pillars can be seen neatly arranged around a huge hole in the ground. Qillaq has another fit and babbles about how it did not look like this the last time around. According to him the whole valley was covered in snow, with the pillars just barely visible. The previous adventurers worked for several days to uncover the tops of the pillars and to dig a tunnel into the ground. Later they descended into this tunnel and having been gone for a long time, Qillaq grew afraid and left. The blizzard started up shortly thereafter and he was lucky to make it back to the village alive.
While the PC's are discussing what to do next, Qillaq skis away. Having no wish to run after him in the deep snow, they let him go.
The party cautiously approaches the pillars and soon spot a leg sticking up from a pile snow and unearth a dead body. The man, who must surely be one of the previous adventurers, is hideously twisted and seems to have broken every bone in his body. His frozen facial expression is one of extreme horror and agony.
The hole in the ground, the resembles a well, is 100 feet across and has no visible bottom. There is a wide staircase (but completely smooth, no steps) winding its way down into the darkness along the walls of the well. It features no railing and is quite steep and slippery. There is strong current of air, intermittently blowing either up or down the well. After some deliberations the PC's decide to tie themselves to each other with a rope and descend.
Their way is made easier by the pitons left by the previous group. As they descend they notice strange crystals, evenly spaced and affixed high on to the walls, when touched the crystals glow dimly. The walls are adorned with murals that weave a story as they descend. A race of cone-shaped beings built great cities, later they warred with a race of flying wormlike beings, finally the cone-shaped beings managed to subdue the wormlike beings with lightning bolts and trap them under the ground.
At one point the stair is blocked by an ice formation and the PC's have to climb around it. Bert, in his clumsy armor, looses his footing and falls, luckily he is tied to the others who manage to hoist him up. Further down at another smaller ice formation, they are set upon by cat-sized, snow spiders who have made their nest in the ice. Our heroes make swift work of them and manage to evade their poisonous fangs.
After 400 feet of descent, they reach the bottom of the well.
The floor is covered in debris and several mangled corpses lie along the walls. In the middle of the floor is a large square hole with two open trap doors. The current of air is flowing through the hole and whatever is beneath is covered in darkness. In searching through the debris, Benjamin discovers a round, pink, metal bead lodged in a crack in the floor.
The bead fits perfectly in the mouth of fish-head statue affixed to the wall at the bottom of stairs. The eyes of the fish glow brightly, as all the crystals along the wall of the well light up. The PC's next turn their attention to the only door in the wall and manage to open it by pressing a large claw-shaped button.
The door smoothly rises and reveals a deep chamber covered in dust. The only feature of the room is a pedestal holding a globe-shaped device with a lever on one side and two protruding metal prongs on the front. Bert quickly examines the device and deduces that pink beads should be fed into the small fish head at the top of the device. Luckily there are three beads on the pedestal.
The whole device lights up as a miniature thunderstorm erupts inside the suddenly transparent globe. Despite the warnings of the others, Bert decides to operate the lever and as the others leap for cover he unleashes a thunderous lightning bolt towards the nearest wall. The bolt promply rebounds and strikes his plate armor giving him a massive jolt. By extreme luck he survives, with only some minor burns and singed hair.
At this point they all notice that the wind has grown much stronger outside in the well. Benjamin rushes for the mechanism to close the door, but is grabbed by a gust of wind and nearly hurled out of the room. In the nick of time he manages to grab the door frame and pull himself back in, shutting the door behind him, as the arrival of some unseen being raises a tornado outside. Even through the tightly closed, stone door, they can hear the wind thrashing about outside and the disturbing ululation, followed by a loud roar. And then the noise passes and the fierce wind recedes.
They open the door and peek out, but everything is still again. Approaching the hole in the ground they decide to explore it and tie a rope around Bert's waist. Thus secured and armed with the lightning gun, Bert proceeds down the hole. The slope is very steep and slippery and it seems to lead into a vast cavernous space, although Bert can see very little of it by the feeble light his torch.
Having descended 100 feet the ground suddenly disappears in front him. In another fit of recklessness he decides to throw his torch into darkness. As it slowly falls it sheds light on some of the gigantic basalt pillars that support this awesome cavern. But no sooner has the light of the torch disappeared as the current of air begins to grow stronger. Scrambling up the slope Bert is chased by gusts of wind and roaring sound which seems to intensify.
As he finally comes close enough to see the others waiting at the mouth of the hole, they point and yell out warnings. Turning and simultaneously firing the lightning gun Bert sees the monstrosity. 50 to 60 feet long the half-polypus wormlike being twists and writhes in the air, random pieces of it flickering in and out existence, only partly visible.
The bolt from the lightning gun catches the creature and envelopes it. Bert keeps blasting it as the other pull him up by the rope.
As the others rush to close the trap doors, Bert looses his grip on the creature and it breaks into the well, the first trap door slamming shut a second too late. The well is suddenly filled with a tornado and Bert is thrown against the far wall, the gun spent. Benjamin rushes to grab the lightning gun, loading it and firing several times but missing each time, finally he is lifted into the air and thrown to the ground. In the meantime Bert has regained the gun, but his shot misses the creature. Having only two shots left, Bert miraculously strikes the creature twice in a row, for terrific effect, forcing it howling down the hole. The creature gives a final roar and retreats into the darkness.
Bear slams the last trap door shut and slides the locking bars in place. The creature can be heard crashing against the trap doors and then silence falls.
Patching themselves up as best they can, they limp back to the village, the blizzard having now receded. On their return they are welcomed as heroes and everybody is eager to hear their tale. Barnabas keeps his word and lets them raid his stores as a reward. All is well for the time being, only Bert is troubled by his experience and near brush with death.
The final battle was very tight and for a while the PC's seemed doomed as they repeatedly failed their saving throws and to-hit rolls. Bert was down to only 1 HP and Benjamin had 2. They had only two shots left in the lightning gun and when Bert's player finally succeeded in his Saving Throw to withstand the wind, the others, who had begun to perk up a little, completely deflated when he threw a 1 for the to-hit roll. A critical miss.
We had at the beginning of the game decided to use James Raggi's Natural 1 and 20 critical hit tables. And the 1 meant that something additionally bad was about to happen. The player rolled a 15 and consulted the table which stated: "Your attack actually hits for max damage, but you learn the wrong lesson from this lucky hit -- you loose all accumulated XP for your current level."
This tremendous hit was enough to push the monsters damage past half its HP, which in turn prompted a morale roll, which it happened to fail despite having only a 30% chance of doing so. A total party kill had thus been suddenly averted.
As we aren't counting XP for this campaign I decided that Bert would not be levelling up at the end of this session. Well needless to say the other players we're thrilled about their unexpected survival, but Bert's player was left with some decidedly mixed feelings.
James Raggi's critical hit and fumble tables are really great to spice up the combat a bit. Most of the effects are really ingenious and unexpected. They are nothing like what you may have seen in other games and they can be used with pretty much any RPG, because very few of the effects affect stats or game mechanics specifically.
I have the tables as a special laminated card, but I think they were also a part of his fanzine Green Devil Face #5.
OK, this post turned out really long. So, I hope I haven't bored anyone too much. My next report will definitely be shorter.
I've been inactive on the board for several years, but today I started a new OD&D/Searcher's of the Unknown campaign and thought I'd share it.
The campaign is called Tales of the Wendigo and is inspired among others by Game of Thrones (the tv-series), Borderlands (the computer game), Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (also a computer game), Doomsday (the movie) and of course the weird tales of H.P. Lovecraft. This is the fluff I used to sell it to my players:
"In the dark north, where the wind howls and the cold cuts through bone, untold treasures and secrets lie buried under the thick snow. Few men would dare brave the perils and horrors of the cold and naked waste to seek them out, but you have no choice. Banished beyond the wall, you cannot return home and so must stake your claim and carve out a new existence, or perish in the wilderness."
I customized Searchers of the Unknown a bit to fit my current tastes and the campaign. All weapons do d6 damage, hit points are rolled with d6, ascending AC (heresy, I know) and other bits and pieces. Since the characters are prisoners when the game begins, their few belongings are randomly decided. Anyone who is interested can have a look at the rules document.
I got three volunteers for the first session and these are the character's they rolled up:
- Benjamin, a sneaky, educated guy (later we learned that he was a wizard's apprentice, before being banished). Ben started with some rope, a mace and a wood axe.
- Humphrey "the bear", a gigantic fellow, with a limited vocabulary (also skilled with tools and manual labor). Bear started with a bow, a spear and a war hammer.
- Bert (the brave), a handsome and reckless knight in shining plate armor (the most unlucky, lucky-guy, ever). Bert started with plate armor, a spear and a shield.
To evade the raiders and slavers that roam the environs near the wall, our heroes set out for the wilderness in the far north, following the trail called the Dragon's Tooth Road (named after the mysterious, jagged pillars lining the path north). After a few weeks of travel and near starvation, the party is set upon by a most fierce blizzard that does not let up. The wind seems to have a will of its own, changing direction from one moment to the next, and sometimes a disturbing ululation can be heard. Almost having given up all hope of survival, they spot a light not far ahead in the night.
Their miraculous rescue turns out to be a man trying to find his privy in the blizzard. He is utterly horrified at their sight and runs screaming for the nearest house. The PC's have stumbled upon Hogarth's End, a small trading village and the northernmost settlement beyond the wall (not counting the settlements of the native inuits of course).
The party is the subject of much attention at the only tavern (and brothel) in the village. Apparently they are the first visitors since the blizzard started a few weeks ago. The villagers are quick to blame a previous group of adventurers who apparently woke the Wendigo in their search of forbidden treasure. The PC's are heavily discouraged from trying to follow in their footsteps.
Later that night the PC's are approached by the tavern keeper, Barnabas, who is also the de facto leader of the village. Barnabas confesses that he played his part in the previous expedition (in the hope of treasure) and that he is afraid that whatever was woken is here to stay unless it is defeated or driven away. Of course he wishes the PC's to investigate and promises supplies and ample rewards. How could they turn this down?
Early next morning the PC's set off in search of Qillaq, the native guide of the previous adventurers, who is now hiding in a nearby ice cave to avoid the wrath of the villagers. The blizzard has calmed a little and their travels are made easier by their newly procured snow shoes. They find Qillaq hiding under a pile of snow and finally manage to threaten him enough to quide them to the site. The eccentric old man seems to be deadly afraid of whatever is out there.
After a few hours of travel the party comes across the frozen corpse of a Caribou, it looks like a pin cushion, having been impaled by a dozen, long, icicles. Qillaq becomes unhinged and pleads for them to turn back, but to no avail. Instead Bear decides to take the Caribous along as a light snack as they continue onward.
A few hours later they come upon a valley that seems to have been dug out from the snow. At the bottom, three, tall, stone pillars can be seen neatly arranged around a huge hole in the ground. Qillaq has another fit and babbles about how it did not look like this the last time around. According to him the whole valley was covered in snow, with the pillars just barely visible. The previous adventurers worked for several days to uncover the tops of the pillars and to dig a tunnel into the ground. Later they descended into this tunnel and having been gone for a long time, Qillaq grew afraid and left. The blizzard started up shortly thereafter and he was lucky to make it back to the village alive.
While the PC's are discussing what to do next, Qillaq skis away. Having no wish to run after him in the deep snow, they let him go.
The party cautiously approaches the pillars and soon spot a leg sticking up from a pile snow and unearth a dead body. The man, who must surely be one of the previous adventurers, is hideously twisted and seems to have broken every bone in his body. His frozen facial expression is one of extreme horror and agony.
The hole in the ground, the resembles a well, is 100 feet across and has no visible bottom. There is a wide staircase (but completely smooth, no steps) winding its way down into the darkness along the walls of the well. It features no railing and is quite steep and slippery. There is strong current of air, intermittently blowing either up or down the well. After some deliberations the PC's decide to tie themselves to each other with a rope and descend.
Their way is made easier by the pitons left by the previous group. As they descend they notice strange crystals, evenly spaced and affixed high on to the walls, when touched the crystals glow dimly. The walls are adorned with murals that weave a story as they descend. A race of cone-shaped beings built great cities, later they warred with a race of flying wormlike beings, finally the cone-shaped beings managed to subdue the wormlike beings with lightning bolts and trap them under the ground.
At one point the stair is blocked by an ice formation and the PC's have to climb around it. Bert, in his clumsy armor, looses his footing and falls, luckily he is tied to the others who manage to hoist him up. Further down at another smaller ice formation, they are set upon by cat-sized, snow spiders who have made their nest in the ice. Our heroes make swift work of them and manage to evade their poisonous fangs.
After 400 feet of descent, they reach the bottom of the well.
The floor is covered in debris and several mangled corpses lie along the walls. In the middle of the floor is a large square hole with two open trap doors. The current of air is flowing through the hole and whatever is beneath is covered in darkness. In searching through the debris, Benjamin discovers a round, pink, metal bead lodged in a crack in the floor.
The bead fits perfectly in the mouth of fish-head statue affixed to the wall at the bottom of stairs. The eyes of the fish glow brightly, as all the crystals along the wall of the well light up. The PC's next turn their attention to the only door in the wall and manage to open it by pressing a large claw-shaped button.
The door smoothly rises and reveals a deep chamber covered in dust. The only feature of the room is a pedestal holding a globe-shaped device with a lever on one side and two protruding metal prongs on the front. Bert quickly examines the device and deduces that pink beads should be fed into the small fish head at the top of the device. Luckily there are three beads on the pedestal.
The whole device lights up as a miniature thunderstorm erupts inside the suddenly transparent globe. Despite the warnings of the others, Bert decides to operate the lever and as the others leap for cover he unleashes a thunderous lightning bolt towards the nearest wall. The bolt promply rebounds and strikes his plate armor giving him a massive jolt. By extreme luck he survives, with only some minor burns and singed hair.
At this point they all notice that the wind has grown much stronger outside in the well. Benjamin rushes for the mechanism to close the door, but is grabbed by a gust of wind and nearly hurled out of the room. In the nick of time he manages to grab the door frame and pull himself back in, shutting the door behind him, as the arrival of some unseen being raises a tornado outside. Even through the tightly closed, stone door, they can hear the wind thrashing about outside and the disturbing ululation, followed by a loud roar. And then the noise passes and the fierce wind recedes.
They open the door and peek out, but everything is still again. Approaching the hole in the ground they decide to explore it and tie a rope around Bert's waist. Thus secured and armed with the lightning gun, Bert proceeds down the hole. The slope is very steep and slippery and it seems to lead into a vast cavernous space, although Bert can see very little of it by the feeble light his torch.
Having descended 100 feet the ground suddenly disappears in front him. In another fit of recklessness he decides to throw his torch into darkness. As it slowly falls it sheds light on some of the gigantic basalt pillars that support this awesome cavern. But no sooner has the light of the torch disappeared as the current of air begins to grow stronger. Scrambling up the slope Bert is chased by gusts of wind and roaring sound which seems to intensify.
As he finally comes close enough to see the others waiting at the mouth of the hole, they point and yell out warnings. Turning and simultaneously firing the lightning gun Bert sees the monstrosity. 50 to 60 feet long the half-polypus wormlike being twists and writhes in the air, random pieces of it flickering in and out existence, only partly visible.
The bolt from the lightning gun catches the creature and envelopes it. Bert keeps blasting it as the other pull him up by the rope.
As the others rush to close the trap doors, Bert looses his grip on the creature and it breaks into the well, the first trap door slamming shut a second too late. The well is suddenly filled with a tornado and Bert is thrown against the far wall, the gun spent. Benjamin rushes to grab the lightning gun, loading it and firing several times but missing each time, finally he is lifted into the air and thrown to the ground. In the meantime Bert has regained the gun, but his shot misses the creature. Having only two shots left, Bert miraculously strikes the creature twice in a row, for terrific effect, forcing it howling down the hole. The creature gives a final roar and retreats into the darkness.
Bear slams the last trap door shut and slides the locking bars in place. The creature can be heard crashing against the trap doors and then silence falls.
Patching themselves up as best they can, they limp back to the village, the blizzard having now receded. On their return they are welcomed as heroes and everybody is eager to hear their tale. Barnabas keeps his word and lets them raid his stores as a reward. All is well for the time being, only Bert is troubled by his experience and near brush with death.
The final battle was very tight and for a while the PC's seemed doomed as they repeatedly failed their saving throws and to-hit rolls. Bert was down to only 1 HP and Benjamin had 2. They had only two shots left in the lightning gun and when Bert's player finally succeeded in his Saving Throw to withstand the wind, the others, who had begun to perk up a little, completely deflated when he threw a 1 for the to-hit roll. A critical miss.
We had at the beginning of the game decided to use James Raggi's Natural 1 and 20 critical hit tables. And the 1 meant that something additionally bad was about to happen. The player rolled a 15 and consulted the table which stated: "Your attack actually hits for max damage, but you learn the wrong lesson from this lucky hit -- you loose all accumulated XP for your current level."
This tremendous hit was enough to push the monsters damage past half its HP, which in turn prompted a morale roll, which it happened to fail despite having only a 30% chance of doing so. A total party kill had thus been suddenly averted.
As we aren't counting XP for this campaign I decided that Bert would not be levelling up at the end of this session. Well needless to say the other players we're thrilled about their unexpected survival, but Bert's player was left with some decidedly mixed feelings.
James Raggi's critical hit and fumble tables are really great to spice up the combat a bit. Most of the effects are really ingenious and unexpected. They are nothing like what you may have seen in other games and they can be used with pretty much any RPG, because very few of the effects affect stats or game mechanics specifically.
I have the tables as a special laminated card, but I think they were also a part of his fanzine Green Devil Face #5.
OK, this post turned out really long. So, I hope I haven't bored anyone too much. My next report will definitely be shorter.
