Artwork found at the imKinsky auction house.

Phoenix 

Burning Narrative 

Phoenix 

The Fall 

Choice 

Heaven 

Hell 

Faust 

The Four Horseman of Destiny 

Redemptive Ideas 

 

You'll find the Iranian born artist's instagram here.

Artworks found at Dastan Gallery

For far too many species in the universe, a cessation of hostilities usually entails the construction of monuments both to the fallen and to the victors, occasionally to the losers if revisionist history is a concept to the creators. Only … Continue reading →

Quick one today.  Lots going on at the day job to keep me busy! 

I had not noticed it, but with the moving around of my various cloud accounts, I had killed my Downloads Page.

Well I spent some time on it yesterday and now I have it working with Google Drive.  And because I am never satisfied with just a link, there are Grid View and List View windows to see all the files.

I figure since I spent so much time on the code for this I should add a few things.

So I included the PDF previews of all my witch books on DriveThruRPG. There are few files that Eden studios have given me permission to host/share and I figured, what the hell, there are a few of my AD&D 2nd Ed "Netbooks" there.  You can find my original "Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks" as well as the AD&D 2nd Ed Priest Kit, the Sun Priest here. 

The Sun Priest shares DNA with the witch as one of the classes I created back in my earliest days of gaming.  The Healer and Necromance complete the quad.  One day I really should finish up that healer class.

I also included the free "Basic" and "S&W" witch character sheets here and a copy of the AD&D Tournament scorecard I have used in the past.

I will be adding to this as I can.  If there are enough files then I'll start a nested folder structure, but right now there are only 30 odd files here.

One thing I *will* add are the Google Sheets of the witch spells I have made.  This help people figure out which witch book they want to buy and if anyone needs an OGC spell they now know where to look.

Let me know if there is anything you would like to see added to this.

Artwork found at the imKinsky auction house.

(This backstory is dedicated to Saladin Ahmed.) Throughout the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries, the development and expansion of popular acceptance of role-playing games of all sorts was paralleled by a similar expansion in live-action role-playing games (LARPs). Ironically, the expansion … Continue reading →

Lá Fhéile Pádraig sona daoibh!
Been a LONG time coming for this part 2.  I wanted to read some more myths of Ireland and Wales in particular before moving on.  One book, in particular, I wanted to make sure I read was Irish Witchcraft & Demonology by St. John D. Seymour. It is such a fun book that I could not pass up owning a copy, especially when I could buy it from the personal collection of Wednesday Mourning!

One of the things we must keep in mind when reading any Celtic myth or story is that the ones we have now were handed down to us from oral traditions and then recorded by Irish Christian monks.  While I am sure they did their best to preserve what they could they undoubtedly recorded them from the point of view of a Christian.  Even the later King Cycle of Irish myths included Christian themes. 

What does that mean to us, or more to the point, me and One Man's God?  Often it is not easy to tell if a "demon" from a Celtic Myth is a demon in their own world view OR a demon from the Christian world view.  Don't claim they all have to be Christian, we don't know and the experts are also split. But that honestly should not matter to us.  I don't care if they are a "Celtic demon" or "Christian demon,"  are they a "Monster Manual Demon?"

Thankfully we have some candidates. But first let's go back to our primary source, the AD&D Deities & Demigods. 

I mentioned in my Part 1 that there are not a lot of great candidates for demons in the text of the D&DG. I even disagree with the idea that Arawn is Lawful Evil. After rereading the First Branch of the Mabinogi I see the Lawful, but not the Evil.  Lawful Neutral is a better fit really. His abode, Annwn, is described as beautiful, unchanging, and without pain or suffering.  Hardly the MO of an evil god.

There are creatures though that could be described as demons.

Air Demon

I did a write-up a bit ago about the Swan Maidens and the Children of Lir.  In the tale Aoifé, step-mother of the Children of Lir, turned the children into swans. As punishment, she was changed into a Demon of the Air.  We know from the tale that demons of the air are immortal.  

Air Demon
FREQUENCY:  Very Rare
NO.  APPEARING:  1-4
ARMOR CLASS: 2
MOVE:  0" Fly 24"
HIT DICE:  4+4 (22 hp)
%  IN  LAIR:  0%
TREASURE  TYPE:  Nil
NO.  OF  ATTACKS:  1
DAMAGE/ATTACK:  Wind Blast 1d6 (60')
SPECIAL  ATTACKS:  Chill (2d4) x3, Invisible
SPECIAL  DEFENSES:  +1  or  better weapon to hit
MAGIC  RESISTANCE:  25%
INTELLIGENCE:  Average
ALIGNMENT:  Chaotic  Evil
SIZE:  M  (5')
PSIONIC ABILITY:  Nil

Wind Demons are among the weakest of demons.  They lack physical bodies and are functionally invisible.  Detect magic, detect evil, or detect invisible will reveal the location of the demon, which will appear as a faint outline of a humanoid creature.  The creature's evil intent is dampened only by their inability to interact with physical items including people. 
They try to cause havoc as much as they can in their own limited way.  They can attack with blasts of wind that whip up items to cause damage.  Additionally, three times per day the Air Demon can cause a blast of chill wind for 2d4 hp of damage to anyone within 15' of the location of the demon.
Air Demons are pitied more often than feared.  Their blasts of wind are ineffective from a distance and their howls of rage are sounds of a gale. They are immortal but lacking substance they can never interact with anything.  Even other air demons are as mist to them.

Demon Boar

The importance of the wild boar and the boar hunt in Celtic myth and even life can't be understated. The Welsh prince Twrch Trwyth was transformed into a boar.  Diarmuid the Irish warrior and member of the Fianna goes on a boar hunt but is killed by the Great Boar of Ben Bulben who had been his transformed half-brother. There are plenty of other examples of boars as monsters in Irish my including one with Cú Chulainn about a giant boar with tusks of gold and a hide as thick as armor. 

Demon Boar
FREQUENCY:  Very Rare
NO.  APPEARING:  1
ARMOR CLASS: -1
MOVE:  18"
HIT DICE:  9+9 (50 hp)
%  IN  LAIR:  25%
TREASURE  TYPE:  Nil
NO.  OF  ATTACKS:  1 gore (slashing)
DAMAGE/ATTACK:  2d8+4
SPECIAL  ATTACKS: Cause Fear
SPECIAL  DEFENSES:  Magic weapon to hit
MAGIC  RESISTANCE:  25%
INTELLIGENCE:  Low
ALIGNMENT:  Chaotic  Evil
SIZE:  L  (8')
PSIONIC ABILITY:  Nil

The demon boar is a demonic spirit that inhabits the body of a boar and creates a true monster. 

The boar grows large and fierce. Its tusks become gold and razor-sharp.  Its hooves become iron and cause flames to erupt as it runs.   Its natural hide is thick as armor. It is immune to all but magical weapons.

The Demon Boar is intelligent enough to plan and scheme.  Some can even speak.  Its normal tactic is to encounter a group of hunters and use its Cause Fear to scatter them into smaller groups.   It then will pick off the hunters one by one.  It relishes in the death and fear it causes.    It lives only to kill great heroes.

Only great weapons such as the Gáe Bulg of Cú Chulainn or the Claíomh Solais of Nuada Airgeadlámh have any chance of bringing this fiend down.

Irish Ways and Irish Laws

I love Celtic myth and history. It is all just so fantastic and fascinates me a in way that Greek and Norse myths never did, though the Norse myths come close.

Since I mentioned the book Irish Witchcraft & Demonology I should link out to the write-up I did on Ireland's most notorious witch, Alice Kyteler.

One of my favorite bits of Irish and Celtic mythology for a game is Brian Young's Castles & Crusades Codex Celtarum.  Brian has a Ph.D. in Bythronic languages and has been a gamer even longer.  He is exactly the sort of person I'd want to write a book like this.  Sure, you don't need a Ph.D. to write game materials, but it sure helps! 

And finally here is one I just found today, but it has been up for a bit.  FilmRise has the entire 1987, 6-part BBC Studios documentary, The Celts, on YouTube.  This fantastic documentary educated many on the history and archeology of the Celts as well as introducing the world to the music of Enya.

Go n-éirí an bóthar leat!

The Trota system is already full of wonder and danger: its primaries are two very small red dwarf stars locked in an orbit of less than 1 AU, and tidal stresses on each other trigger intense ultraviolet flares that blast … Continue reading →

Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Demons," 1980 

The Omen, 1977 

Arnold Schoenberg's opera "Moses and Aaron," 1980

If any one good thing came out of the kidney stone of a year that was 2020, it’s discovering that that increasing the number of Triffid Ranch events in a month doesn’t “dilute the brand” or similar MBAspeak. If anything, … Continue reading →

Much like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition, the Jonstown Compendium is a curated platform for user-made content, but for material set in Greg Stafford's mythic universe of Glorantha. It enables creators to sell their own original content for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha and HeroQuest Glorantha (Questworlds). This can include original scenarios, background material, cults, mythology, details of NPCs and monsters, and so on, but none of this content should be considered to be ‘canon’, but rather fall under ‘Your Glorantha Will Vary’. This means that there is still scope for the authors to create interesting and useful content that others can bring to their Glorantha-set campaigns.

—oOo—

What is it?
Rivendell Maps is a publisher of maps drawn from RuneQuest Classic supplements.
Map of Apple Lane is a map of Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 4.99 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Tin Inn is a map of the Tin Inn, the inn located in Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 499 KB, full colour PDF.

Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop is a map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, the trading house located in Apple Lane, the village in Dragon Pass as described in Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).

It is 4.82 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis is a map of a section of The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the boxed set, Big Rubble.

It is 3.83 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Zebra Fort in the Big Rubble is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the boxed set, Big Rubble.

It is 5.66 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.

It is 3.12 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of Balastor’s Barracks is a map of a location in The Rubble, the ruins of Old Pavis, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.

It is 4.93 MB, full colour PDF.

Map of The Sea Cave is a map of the location east of Corflu on the coast of Prax, as described in the scenario, RuneQuest Scenario Pack 2: SP8 The Sea Cave.

It is 288 KB, full colour PDF.

The majority of the eight are generally clear and easy to understand, mostly done in tones of brown and grey. The exceptions are the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks, both of which suffer from a lack of detail and are not easy to understand.

Where is it set?
The Map of Apple Lane, the Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, and the Map of Tin Inn are all set in Apple Lane in Sartar.
The Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis, the Map of Zebra Fort, the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks, and Map of Balastor’s Barracks are all set in the Big Rubble.
The Map of The Sea Cave is set east of Corflu on the coast of Prax.
Who do you play?
None of the maps have specific play requirements in terms of the Player Characters.
What do you need?
All of the maps from Rivendell Maps require RuneQuest: Classic Edition, but can also be used with RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. All eight are designed to be imported into the virtual tabletop, Roll20. (Other virtual tabletops are available.)
The Map of Apple Lane, the Map of Gringle’s Pawnshop, and the Map of Tin Inn require Apple Lane: Two Beginning Scenarios - Gringle’s Pawnshop & The Rainbow Mounds (Scenario Pack 2).
The Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis and the Map of Zebra Fort require The Big Rubble.
The Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks require RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks.
The Map of The Sea Cave requires RuneQuest Scenario Pack 2: SP8 The Sea Cave.
What do you get?
One of the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting lockdown is the rise in online gaming, such that in some parts of the world, this is the prevalent way in which many roleplayers now play, whether one-shots, regular games, and virtual conventions. So Virtual Tabletops have become platforms on which roleplayers game, their handling elements which would have physical form when playing at the table (pre-COVID)—dice rolling, handouts, miniatures, and maps, and more. In some cases, publishers work with Virtual Tabletops to make their scenarios available, but in others, the Game Master creates and imports her own content, the handouts, the maps, and so on. This is where the maps from Rivendell Maps are useful. Each one was designed to be imported into Roll20, one of the more popular Virtual Tabletops. This is their primary advantage.
There are eight maps available from Rivendell Maps. They are of locations detailed in titles explored in RuneQuest: Classic Edition, so not locations immediately associated with the more recent RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha. This limits their usefulness, as does the fact that beyond the confines of their individual scenarios, they are unlikely to brought to the Virtual Tabletop again. Of the eight maps, the Map of The Rubble of Old Pavis, the Map of the Topside of Balastor’s Barracks, and the Map of Balastor’s Barracks are rough and indistinct, again impeding their utility. To be fair, the map of Balastor’s Barracks given in RuneQuest Scenario Pack 1: Balastor’s Barracks is plain anyway, but this map is not an improvement. Of the eight maps, the Map of the Sea Cave is the most pleasing, being clearly and simply drawn, makes good use of colour, and is free of clutter.
Is it worth your time?
Yes—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. However, should the Game Master require a map in an emergency for her Virtual Tabletop game, they offer a solution at least.
No—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. They are also an expensive option, when it may be simpler for the Game Master to draw and upload her own.Maybe—The maps from Rivendell Maps vary in quality and are often a little too dark to read clearly. Serviceable at best, they are also an expensive option, when it may be simpler for the Game Master to draw and upload her own.

Today is an interesting monster from German folklore.  The Drude is a type of malevolent nocturnal spirit.  Depending on who is doing the classification it could be a spirit, an elf, a kobold, a demon, a hag, or even a witch.  Like many creatures of folklore, they do not conform to the notions of RPG creatures.

The question is what sort of thing a Drude (pl. Druden) is.   Even when one considers it a kobold, there is a lot of debate about what THAT is as well.  

But I think I have an interesting idea.

Drude
Small Humanoid

Frequency: Very Rare
Number Appearing: 1d2 (1d4)
Alignment: Chaotic [Chaotic Evil]
Movement: 90' (30') [9"]
Armor Class: 7 [12]
Hit Dice: 3d8* (14 hp)
   Small: 3d6* (11 hp)
Attacks: dagger or witch spell
Damage: 1d4-1
Special: daylight sensitivity, infravision, witch magic. 
Save: Witch 3
Morale: 6 (8)
Treasure Hoard Class: None
XP: 50 (OSE) 65 (LL)

Kobolds can be found in the underground caverns of nearly any climate or environment.  Their ability to adapt and even thrive in areas where other creatures would perish is one of their greatest strengths is a world that only recognizes strength.

When a kobold group moves into an area near a hag the hag's corrupting influence will cause a Drude to be born among the Kobolds.  A drude, plural druden, is a type of kobold but is usually smarter and has the ability to use magic.  Often called "kobold witches" these creatures will seek out the hag, or hags, that caused them to spawn in an attempt to serve them.  The hag will often teach the kobold their magic instead of killing and eating them.  No one is exactly sure why this happens, save that it might grant the hags a bit of attention and even veneration they crave.

A drude can cast spells as a 3rd level witch and may advance to as high as the 7th level.  They are treated as if they are either part of the Faerie or Malefic Traditions. A drude typically favors spells that create fire or cause fire damage.  A drude will typically take a hag as their patron, usually the hag that is local to them.  The hag teaches the drude witchcraft and magic and in return, the kobold tribe serves the hag or hags.

In combat, the drude, despite their eldritch powers, are still weak in a battle.  They will avoid combat when they can and would rather strike an opponent from a distance.  A drude among a group of kobolds will raise their overall morale by 2 since the combination of both magic and normal kobold strike tactics mesh well. 

Druden are vulnerable to sunlight. They attack at -2 in any form of bright sunlight or at -1 for reduced sunlight or a Continual Light spell.  They have infravision to 90'.

The offspring of a drude and a kobold will be a drude.

--

Klash-Nak is a kobold witch of the 4th level. Her patron is an Annis hag she calls "Mother Nightmare." 

Satire on the Human Vices  The Marriage of the Devil in the Kingdom of Hades, around 1600  Devils torturing sinners in Hell
Swanenburgh's original works can be found in previous posts from 2017 and 2015.

Most Lovecraftian investigative horror is about preventing the apocalypse, about preventing the disaster which would end the world as we know it and instigate the fall of mankind, which would arise because the Stars have come Right, and some powerful entity—god?—of the Mythos or the Unnatural has appeared or been summoned to unleash a hell hitherto unimagined. Whole scenarios and even campaigns have been dedicated to preventing such an occurrence, but what if it did? It is a question that devotees of the genre have constantly asked themselves, and over the years it has been visited a handful of times. First in print with End Time, Doctor Michael C. LaBossiere’s Miskatonic University Library Association monograph which took humanity off of Earth and out into the universe following the end of the world, whilst the more recent Cthulhu Apocalypse from Pelgrane Press and Fate of Cthulhu from Evil Hat Productions answered the question in very different ways. The former by presenting the ‘Apocalypse Machine’, a tool/flowchart that provides the means to build an apocalyptic disaster and track its effects on both mankind and the planet, the latter presenting the apocalypse as something which could be stopped by going back in time. The latest entry into this subgenre is the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game.

The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is published by Cthulhu Reborn, best known as the publisher of the well-received Convicts & Cthulhu: Call of Cthulhu Roleplaying in the Penal Colonies of 18th Century Australia. It explores futures and futures past—the Post-Apocalyptic worlds it posits all stem from the modern world, from the Victorian era onwards—in which the calendar has turned and Great Cthulhu has risen from his slumber under the Pacific and the coasts washed over with the oceans and strangely batrachian creatures; in which the Black Pharaoh was restored in Egypt and all became enthralled to his dark worship; in which the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young strides out of the deep jungle and the gifts the world with a rewilding of such fecundity that it boils over with rabidly radical births that spawn change after change; in which strange fungoid insects appear with promises of great gifts and new technology, only to enslave mankind in rapacious drive to strip the planet of its resources, including humanity itself; and in which Serpentine Humanoids are awoken from their aeons’ old slumber to reclaim their ancient empire and reclaim the planet from the primitive ape descendants which have stolen it in their absence.

Such disastrous turn of events may have only happened recently, they may have happened hundreds of years of the past, but as with many imagined Post-Apocalyptic worlds, the survivors are forced to pick over the bones of former civilisations and societies and compete with other survivors for scare resources in order to merely get by, let alone attempt to build a better future. Yet in a future where the forces of the Unnatural run wild, the survivors must contend with the knowledge of what exactly happened being all but lost, the lawless of the new world, with cultists and devotees of the Unnatural reveling in the worship of their true masters and their victory over mankind, and with confronting both devotees and masters, the resulting shocks to their psyche likely to claw at the bonds forged with family and community, if not drive them insane.

It should be noted that the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is both a roleplaying game of its very own and not a roleplaying game of its very own. It is not a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror a la Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition or Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, but somewhere in between and hewing towards the latter rather than former. It is a percentile driven roleplaying game, but not a Basic Roleplay variant. Rather it has been written under an ‘Open Game Licence’ much like Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. It is not a Mythos roleplaying game in the sense that it does not simply replicate entity after entity, race after race of the Mythos or the Unnatural. In fact, it limits what entities it can mention to those which are out of copyright and points the Game Moderator in the direction of both Call of Cthulhu, Seventh Edition and Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game, as well as Trail of Cthulhu, as ready sources of such things, as well as spells and Mythos tomes (and that is in addition to the possibility of borrowing the ‘Apocalypse Machine’ from Trail of Cthulhu). Being written under an ‘Open Game Licence’ also means that there is a wide number of shifts in terminology to be found in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, such as Rituals for spells and Tomes of Terror for Mythos tomes. These shifts are no more than a simple step to the left though, and the adjustment for a Keeper and her players from any other roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror will be relative slight. As much as the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game encourages reference to those other earlier works, it does stand alone, and it does something further, it presents a future—or futures—of those games if the Investigators fail…

A Survivor in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game has six statistics—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence, Power, and Charisma, all ranging between three and eighteen. Willpower represents a Survivor’s mental fortitude and drive, and is equal to his Power. Willpower Points are lost when a Survivor attempts to suppress his mental illness, is exhausted, attempts to resist persuasion, suffers emotional burnout, or fuel unnatural phenomena—such as casting rituals. Besides a range of skills and a Sanity score, both rated as percentage values, a Survivor has Resources and Bonds. Resources, rated between one and twenty, represent supplies and personal possessions, their value determined by a Survivor’s Archetype (or Occupation), but can be increased at the cost of skill points. Bonds come in two types. Individual Bonds represent a Survivor’s relationships with friends, family, and so on, and are each equal to a Survivor’s Charisma, whilst his Community Bond represents the strength of the connection with a group and is equal to half his Resources rating. Both Bonds and Resources can be tested during play like statistics and both can change over time through play.

To create a Survivor in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game, a player rolls for his statistics (or chooses from an array), selects an Archetype, calculates his Resources and selects his Bonds. Archetypes are divided between those of the Recent Apocalypse, such as Former Military or Former Student, and those who Post-Apocalypse-Born, such as Muscle and Technology Salvager. Each recommends a particular statistic, grants some set skills and some further options, all at a set value, plus staring Resources and number of Bonds. A player can also customise his Survivor’s skills with extra Skill Point Picks. A player has ten of these, each of which adds twenty percentile points or they can be sacrificed to increase a Survivor’s level of Resources. A Survivor can also have more depending on the harshness of the post-apocalypse, but these can only be assigned to Post-Apocalypse skills, such as Scavenge or Survival.

Deved, Son of Bunker 242
Law Giver
Age 19

STR 14/70 (Wiry)
CON 12/60
DEX 13/65 (Agile)
INT 14/70 (Perceptive)
POW 15/75 (Determined)
CHA 17/85 (Magnetic)

Hit Points 13
Damage Bonus +1
Willpower Points 60
Sanity Points 60
Breaking Point 45

Mental Disorder: Dendrophilia

Bonds
My father, Commander of Bunker 242 17
Old Man John, Keeper of the Statutes 17
Nency, friend and companion 17
Community (Bunker 242) 14

Resources 10

Skills: Dodge 50%, Firearms 40%, Insight 70%, Law (Regulations According to Bunker 242) 60%, Melee Weapons 50%, Persuade 80%, Post-Apocalypse Lore (Fecund Forest) 40%, Research 30%, Scavenge 50%, Search 60%, Survival (Fecund Forest) 30%, Technology use 40%, Unarmed Combat 60%, Unnatural 20%

Mechanically, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is a percentile game. The results of any test—statistic or skill related—can be a critical success, success, failure, or fumble. A critical success is a result of one or doubles up to the value of the statistic or skill being tested; a success is a roll equal to or under the statistic or skill; a failure is result over the statistic or skill; and a fumble is a result of double zero or doubles above the value of the statistic or skill. The deadliness of the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is reflected in the Luck mechanic, which is a straight 50% roll and many weapons, such as grenades or submachine guns possessing a Lethality percentile rating. If an attack is successful and the Lethality roll is also successful, the target is killed straight, and even if failed, the dice results of the Lethality roll are added together and inflicted as damage, so the larger the failure, the more damage inflicted!

The Sanity mechanics in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game are similar to those of the Delta Green: The Role-Playing Game. Sanity can be lost through exposure to three sources—Violence, Helplessness, and the Unnatural, and in the case of Violence and Helplessness, a Survivor can become inured to such sources, though this comes at cost to their personality and their Bonds. If a Sanity test is failed, a Survivor suffers from Temporary Insanity, and will either Flee, Struggle against the source of the insanity, or Submit and collapse. When a Survivor’s Sanity is reduced to below his Breaking Point—equal to four fifths of his starting Sanity score—the effects of the Sanity loss are not temporary, the Survivor gaining a Mental Disorder. The Mental Disorder can be triggered by further exposure to whatever caused it in the first place. Lost Sanity can be recovered by interacting with a Bond, defeating Unnatural creatures, destroying accounts of the Unnatural (which sets up a tension between the need to study such accounts in order to destroy them and the need to destroy the tomes to remove them from the world), fulfilling personal goals, and looking after others. The last two are conducted during periods of Downtime which follow any investigation into the Unnatural and narratively serve as a counterpoint to the horror which has gone on before.

In addition to rules for confronting the Unnatural, researching Tomes of Terror, and handling Supernatural Effects just as you would expect for a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game also includes rules for living and surviving in the apocalypse. These include rules for scavenging and jury-rigging found technology, resource scarcity, vehicles, and heavy weapons, all mainstays of the Post Apocalypse genre. It also integrates the effects of the Post Apocalypse futures in sanity. Each Post Apocalypse is graded on its degree of Harshness—either Normal(ish), Harsh, Very Harsh, or Nightmarish. The greater the degree of Harshness, the lower a Survivor’s beginning Sanity and the greater the likelihood of his beginning play with a Mental Disorder. This is offset by more skill adjustments and increased statistics during Survivor creation. For the Game Moderator, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game poses a number of questions such as, “What event triggered the Apocalypse?”, “What changed?”, “Is there any hope?”, and so on, which answering should ideally spur the creation of an Apocalypse of her own. In addition to this, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game provides eight example Apocalypses, each very different. For example, in ‘Apocalypse 1: The Stars Turn, Turn, Turn’, the stars have come right and multiple entities of the Mythos stalk the Earth, whilst in ‘Apocalypse 2: Nyarlathotep Unmasked’, the failure to prevent a summoning off the coast of China in the 1920s—in a knowing nod to Masks of Nyarlathotep indicative of the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game’s potential role as a sequel—pushed the world into a nuclear strike and nuclear winter. Each of the eight Apocalypses provides answers to the eight questions plus some threats and tomes of terror, but is really only a snapshot of the Apocalypse in question, ready for further development upon the part of Game Moderator.

The Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game also comes with a campaign setting plus two quite lengthy, and very different scenarios, which together showcase the possibilities of the Lovecraftian-Post-Apocalypse genre. The campaign setting is an adaptation by Kevin Ross of William Hope Hodgson’s 1913 novel, The Night Land. Set millions of years into the future, this has the last of humanity surviving under a dwindling sun in the Great Redoubt, an eight-mile high pyramid, watched over by the leviathan Watchers, waiting to be able to crack open the Great Redoubt and consume the souls of the last of mankind. Although due to be developed into a full campaign setting of its own from Cthulhu Reborn, it comes with everything that a Game Moderator would need to get started. It covers technology and life in the Great Redoubt, psychic powers, and the geography and threats and allies of the Night Land, plus several scenario hooks. What is interesting about the setting is that although The Night Land has also been acknowledged as an influence upon H.P. Lovecraft, it has never been translated into a gameable setting before, primarily because, as Ross explains, the novel is impenetrable. The result of his efforts though, is a fascinating campaign setting, in some ways more of a Science Fiction setting akin to that of Marcus L Rowland’s Forgotten Futures, but combined with a terrifying and weird mythos of its very own.

The first of the two scenario’s in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is ‘Kick the Can’ by Jeffrey Moeller, which is set in one of the earlier example Apocalypses given in the book, ‘Apocalypse 4: The Firelands of Melqart’. It takes place a year after civilisation has been reduced to ashes by a rain of fire following a prophecy by the weird cult-like, Church of Melqart. The Survivors, each of whom was initiated into the Church of Melqart, have spent the last year in a bunker and emerge into the ash-laden world because their supplies are running low and because they received a summons from the Church of Melqart to come to Washington, D.C. to participate in a great ceremony. As the Survivors make their way towards the capitol, they will discover some of the secrets of the apocalyptic event and the Church of Melqart, all of which point to a greater catastrophe to come. The scenario is linear, but has the scope for the Game Moderator to add her own scenes and the potential to become something of a slog as the Survivors cycle their way across America to Washington, D.C. Another problem is that it involves graphic, violent acts towards women and children, and whilst the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is a horror game, this may be outside of the players’ comfort zones. So, at the very least, the Game Moderator will want to establish that the players are fine with this in the context of the scenario or at least alter some of the more graphic elements. Otherwise, ‘Kick the Can’ is a solid one-shot with quite a lot of information and detail to it.

Similarly, Jo Kreil’s ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ will require some discussion with regard to the degrees of debauchery it involves and to what degree the Game Moderator wants to describe them. The scenario is set in Victorian England in the 1890s following multiple performances of a play called The King in Yellow, including for the late Queen Victoria, which saw the Yellow King come to Earth and corrupt the morals of every upstanding Englishman. This is an apocalypse of decadence and debauchery rather than death and destruction, one which the Survivors can hope to overturn if they follow the instructions of Myrddin and ensure the return of England’s one true king to bring an end to the rule of the Yellow King. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ then, is a combination of The King in Yellow and Arthurian legend, a combination which could have clashed and it may take a little convincing upon the part of the players to accept the combination, since the Arthurian elements are not subtle, but as it turns out, works well together. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ provides two possible endings—‘hopeful’ and ‘nihilistic’. The former is the more positive and grants the Survivors the capacity to defeat the Yellow King, whereas the latter does not, it being revealed to them that their efforts were naught but an entertainment for the Yellow King’s benefit. ‘A Yellow and Unpleasant Land’ is the least traditional Apocalypse in the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game and is all the more interesting for it, highlighting not just the continued flexibility of the corruptive mythos of the Yellow King, but also the Post-Apocalyptic format too.

Physically, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is presented in quite a bold fashion in terms of colours used and the layout. The full colour artwork is excellent throughout, but the maps do vary in quality. It also needs an edit in places. In general, the book is well written, but the title of the running example throughout the book, ‘The Making of ‘Mad’ Maxine’, is trite.

As a Post-Apocalyptic roleplaying game, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is perhaps one of the harshest and deadliest available, though it avoids the more gonzo elements to be found amongst many of the similar treatments of the genre. As roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game draws from many elements that are familiar, including mechanics, making it easy to adjust to—at least in terms of the streamlined rules and terminology, if not the setting. As a roleplaying game of Lovecraftian investigative horror, it adds a weirdness to the Post-Apocalypse’s brutal survival horror. As a roleplaying game of Post-Apocalyptic Lovecraftian investigative horror the Apocthulhu Roleplaying Game is far from innovative or ground-breaking, since it draws heavily on elements which have gone before it. However, it does push at the boundaries of the genre and it does provide the means for the Game Moderator to create and explore Apocalypses of her own, whether created from the ground up, or as a result of failure upon the part of her players’ Investigators. Perhaps in having the opportunity to explore the consequences of their failure, the Investigators—as Survivors—will have the opportunity to undo what they could not stop in the first place?

Ok. Confession time, and this might get me kicked out of "I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters."

I have never seen "Hawk the Slayer." 

Not even once. That is until today.

Hawk the Slayer

Well, it has Jack Palance chewing up scenes like he always does. A funky post-disco soundtrack that is so 1980 it makes me want to find a pair of roller skates.   But it also features the recently late William Morgan Sheppard as Ranulf. Patricia "Magenta" Quinn as a sorceress.  And Christopher Benjamin (Jago from Doctor Who). So certainly an interesting cast.  

The "Adventuring Party" is made up of Hawk  (a fighter or ranger), Ranulf an old fighter, Gort (a giant), Crow (an elf), Baldin (a dwarf), even a sorceress. I have to admit they are kind of fun.

With some of the music and scenes, there is a solid spaghetti western feel to this. 

Jack Palance must have had the time of his life with this.  Overacting. Running around like a Ren Faire Darth Vader.  The dynamic between Hawk, Voltan, and Eliane is not entirely unlike that of  Sergei, Strahd, and Tatyana. 

The movie is fun, if predictable. But not exactly a classic really.  Sorry, Tim. 

Though I can see why everyone wanted a sequel, but I think it works best as D&D inspiration.  The characters would make fun NPCs for anyone familiar with the movie.

Gaming Content

Elfin Mind Stone and Mind Sword - this sword has the ability to detect the thoughts and actions of anyone the wielder is fighting against. This translates to a +4 to hit and a +3 to AC and even allows the wielder to fight in conditions that would otherwise blind them.  It can cast light once per day.  The wielder of the mind sword can summon the sword to hand at will.

--

Tim Knight of Hero Press and Pun Isaac of Halls of the Nephilim along with myself are getting together at the Facebook Group I'd Rather Be Killing Monsters to discuss these movies.  Follow along with the hashtag #IdRatherBeWatchingMonsters that is if I can get my co-admins to agree this is the best hashtag for this!

I am really enjoying HeroForge.

Maybe, too much really. I have nearly a hundred characters I have made and I have bought a few as well that I love.

So really it was only a matter of time before I made my own HeroForge Zatanna.

I could not quite get her fishnets and her tux did not have tails, but otherwise, I think she is great.You can get yours here, https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D16149885/

I also used the lighting effects on her.  It works out well in the screenshots, but I still trying to find the proper "magic" for the printed minis.  For example here is another mistress of magic, The Simbul holding silver flame.

And here is how it looks printed.

Not bad, but I can certainly tweak it a bit more.

Z would be a welcome addition to my growing group of magical people.

And while I was working on this we are NOW getting reports that an HBO Max series or movie for Zatanna is on the way!

Looks like we could be getting Batgirl, Batwoman, and more Shazam!  This could be great!

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord details a borderlands city where life takes a strange fever-dream cast, where confidence tricks and scams are an accepted way of life, where its each of four contradas—or quarters—worships one of the four gods (and pointedly ignores the fifth) entombed in the squat, black bulk of the Tomb of the Town Gods, and where adventurers can find respite, relaxation, rumours, and more from the wilderness beyond… It stands amidst the Greater Marlinko Canton in the world of Zěm—as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton, not too far from the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, and from there, Misty Isles of the Eld. It is published by Hydra Collective LLC and is an Old School Renaissance setting supplement designed to be run using Goblinoid Games’ Labyrinth Lord. Of course, it can easily be adapted to the Retroclone of the Game Master’s choice.

As a city located in the Hill Cantons, a region described as, “A Slavic-myth inspired, acid fantasy world of Moorcockian extradimensional incursions and Vancian swindlers and petty bureaucrats.”, Marlinko matches much of that description. Both of its four contradas and their inhabitants have Slavic names and many of its monsters are drawn from Slavic legend. For example, one of the city’s leading socialites is Lady Szara, organiser of the annual Bathe in the Blood of your Servants charity ball, is secretly an ancient and evil strigoi—a Romanian version of the vampire—who it is suggested, should speak in the style of the actress, Zsa Zsa Gabor, only more sinister. She may even employ the Player Characters to locate certain magical gewgaws and knick-knacks, that is, if she simply does not decide to consume them... The Eld—essentially ‘space elves’ from another dimension with a distinctly Melnibonéan-like, decadent sensibility—slink secretly into the city, and the bureaucracy extends to unions, such as The Guild of Condottiere, Linkboys, Roustabouts, and Stevedores, a union for adventuring party hirelings, which really objects to scab hirelings! Numerous swindlers and scam artists are mentioned throughout the description of the city, and there is even a section on ‘Running Long and Short Cons’.

Intended to be regularly visited by Player Characters of Second and Third Levels, what Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is not, is a traditional city supplement. There is no building-by-building description, no great history of the city, or great overview. Instead, it focuses on the pertinent details about four contradas and the things that can be found there and more importantly, can be interacted with by the Player Characters. Včelar is home to Marlinko’s wealthy, dominated by their great painted-plastered town-manses and famed for Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit where the perpetually name dropping and bragging owner has built a domed all-weather tiger pit in which he stages tiger wrestling! Obchodník is the city’s business district, where at Fraža’s Brokerhouse, the Player Characters might make purchases from the radically—for Marlinko, that is—honest and unfortunately terribly racist, Fraža the Curios Dealer, or pay for at fortune at The Serene Guild of Seers, Augurs, Runecasters, and Wainwrights—the clarity (at least) of any such fortune depending on the cost. Svině is home to Marlinko’s slums, but also many guilds, such as The Illustrious Workers of Wood or The Guild of Condotierre, Linkboys, Roustabouts and Stevedores’ Dome of Supernal Dealings, but also home to the Catacombs of St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus, whose disturbingly bloody misinterpretations of Christianity has the potential to unleash murderous mayhem upon the city. Soudce is home to the city’s suburbs, their skyline dominated by the Onion Tower of the Checkered Mage, the home of the city’s resident arch-mage, František, a surprisingly level-headed wizard, who might pay well for certain items.

Each of the four contradas is accompanied by a table of random encounters, a mixture of the mundane, the silly, and the weird. For example, a group of flirts who if a Player Character parties with might wake up the next morning at his own shotgun wedding; Kytel the Duellist, a thoroughly bored swordmaster who will fight anyone to first blood; Old Slinky Panc, an escaped tiger, probably drugged and quite harmless, who Jarek the Nagsman would probably want returned—and returned unharmed; and a Hairless Hustler who will offer to sell the Player Characters two bars of surprisingly warm to the touch silver metal—and there is a reason that the Hairless Hustler lacks hair… These are all engaging encounters which make getting about the city memorable and interesting, some of them having the capacity to turn into interesting adventures depending upon the actions of the Player Characters.

Marlinko’s notables are described in some detail, but perhaps the best part of their descriptions are the suggestions on how to speak like them. The Game Master should have enormous fun portraying any one of them. In comparison, only two adventure sites are detailed in Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ and ‘Catacombs of the Church of the Blood Jesus’. Ultimately, they are both places to raid and ransack, home to respective evils present in the city, but not raid and ransack without reason. A Player Character might be kidnapped and find himself locked up in the catacombs first or the Player Characters all together might be hired to find a missing person, whilst Lady Szara could hire the Player Characters rather than give them cause to attack her and so have them visit her home. Of the two, ‘Lady Szara’s Town-Manse’ is the more interesting and the more thoughtful in its design, being an actual home rather than just another monster lair. It is also better mapped.

Beyond describing might be found in each contrada, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko details crime—sanctioned and unsanctioned crime—and punishment in the city, advice on running cons in the city, and buying and selling in the city—everything from War Ocelots and Radegast’s Dark ale to the Poignard of the Overworld and a campy, faux-barbarian meadhall. Emphasising Marlinko as a place to visit and unwind in its taverns and other entertainment establishments, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko includes a guide to carousing in the city and potential outcomes whichever contrada the Player Characters are visiting. There are even three locations for the Labyrinth Lord to expand as potential adventure sites, though of course, it would be nice to have had more ready-to-play adventure sites in the book.

However, as odd and as weird as the city of Marlinko is, it can get weirder. As with the other titles set in the Hill Cantons, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko has a Chaos Index, which tracks the ebb and flow of the weirdness in the city, much of it being driven by the actions of the Player Characters, including making trips back and forth to the Slumbering Ursine Dunes. This is indicative of the design of Fever-Dreaming Marlinko, that it is ideally meant to be played in tandem with Slumbering Ursine Dunes. As the weirdness factor grows, the cultists of the Church of the Blood Jesus might commit more, and bloodier murders, mass hallucinations might break out, hundreds participate in a group wedding, and more. The weirdness factor also affects the ‘News of the Day’, the rumours and truths which spread throughout the city.

Rounding out Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is a set of five appendices. The first is a bestiary which adds three monsters—the Robo-Dwarf, the Wobbly Giant, and the Cantonal Strigoi, whilst the second, a ‘Tiger Wrestling Mini-Game’, provides the rules for handling events at Jarek’s Manse and Tiger Pit, the only tiger-wrestling arena in town. It is definitely a dangerous pastime, but good luck to any Player Character who throws his hat into the ring! Two new Classes are detailed in the third appendix. The Mountebank is a Thief-subclass which has the Sleight-of-Hand skill for moving and switching out objects as part of a scam, can use Illusionist spells—though they can only be learned by swindling them out of actual Illusionists, and even temporarily raise their Charisma to eighteen! The other Class is the Robo-Dwarf, which is more of a strange mechanical variant upon the actual Dwarf Class. The last two appendices provide the Labyrinth Lord with a useful list of ‘Common NPC names and Nicknames’ and a pronunciation guide.

Physically, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is generally well laid out, the writing is clear, and the artwork is excellent. It needs an edit in places, the real problem with the physical book is that it is not well organised, lacking an introduction which would help the Labyrinth Lord understand how the city functions as a game setting and the order in which the book’s contents come not always in the right place. Once the Labyrinth Lord has read through the book, it is relatively easy to grasp how the city works as a setting.

Apart from the less than useful organisation, there are really only one or two other issues with Fever-Dreaming Marlinko—both of which could cause offence. The first is that St. Jack’s Church of the Blood Jesus is a potentially offensive misinterpretation of Christianity, whilst the second is that one or two of the NPCs are described as fervent racists and that the Labyrinth Lord is expected to portray this in character. Now this does take place in a fantasy world, but that does not mean that neither a player nor the Labyrinth Lord cannot or should be necessarily comfortable about this. This is one aspect of the setting which will require a discussion between all of the players before play begins to see whether they are prepared to accept it or not as part of the setting. The likelihood is not and the Labyrinth Lord should be prepared to replace it with potentially less offensive character quirks or attitudes for the NPCs concerned.

Fever-Dreaming Marlinko is designed as campaign base, one which the Player Characters will return to again and again after exploring first the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, then the Misty Isles of the Eld, and from there, the wider world of Zěm as detailed in What Ho, Frog Demons! – Further Adventures in Greater Marlinko Canton. Although the Labyrinth Lord could use it in another setting, it does work best with those other books. And each time the Player Characters visit Marlinko, the Labyrinth Lord is given the means to make that visit memorable—with locations they might want to go to, random encounters which can become something more, rumours, and eventually weird things going on around them. There is no part of Marlinko as described which cannot be interacted with or does not add to the sense of oddness which pervades the city and which will probably be worse with every visit. Overall, Fever-Dreaming Marlinko – A City Adventure Supplement for Labyrinth Lord is a brilliantly written, incredibly gameable setting supplement which provides the Labyrinth Lord with an excellent toolkit to bring a fantastical city setting to life.

Sunday marks the latest Carnivorous Plant Tour before the Venus flytraps and North American pitcher plants start waking up: admission is free, masks are mandatory, and several new enclosures will be ready for public view and discussion. With luck, this … Continue reading →

And so the 2021 Triffid Ranch show season starts the way the 2020 show season ended: in the middle of March, just in time for Daylight Savings Time. This Sunday’s Carnivorous Plant Tour kicks it off, but it’s definitely not … Continue reading →

"A stalwart monster, huge in size, Did streight frae out the river rise, His legs were horn, wi joints o' steel, This body like a crocodile..."  "Grim furies spread their forkit fangs, An drove at John wi furious bangs..."  "The Kelpy tried we John to grapple, But Arn caught him by the thrapple, And gar'd his carcase sweep the stanners, Whilk made a noise like corn fanners..."  "Her coatties pat the knees were kiltit, In eldrich notes she croone'd an' liltit..."  "Sae fently did she wing her flight, In a twinklin' she was out o' sight... "
 You can read the book in its entirety at Google Books.  The higher resolution images found thanks to Spl Hand Colored Rare Book Collection.