Dungeon Sigil Method for Fast Relief of Aches and Stress

So I have hinted, in the past, at my Austin Osman Spare-inspired HURRY UP I NEED A DUNGEON method. Please note, a little knowledge is a little danger, and of course whatever you summon be prepared to put down.

Holy Moley! Guacamole!

At least, it makes a map very quickly when you're in a tight spot. Let us say that your party of PCs abandons the adventure they are currently on, the one you planned to run, when they find a map to some far-away spot.

It has happened to you in just this way, yes?

You may find that explorations of the Chao are not to your liking, and so I do not give you links, yes, but merely a sidelong glimpse at the method of dungeon sigilization

Suppose you have need.  You make a wish

THIS IS MY WISH TO HAVE A SMALL DUNGEON

according to the methods of Mr. Spare, above, you may cross out repeating letters in your phrase. In this case it will give you something such as this:

And connecting the remaining letters together artfully and forgetting the whole thing altogether is the only piece that takes skill, and you may exclude that last part if you are not casting a spell but only imaginarily emobdifying your intent.

Please note, there are technical errors in the above (for example I left in the H when it ought to have been left out).

Such is the poor practice of an unwashed and unlettered CKXaosian initiate.

I use the sigil to make a map on graph paper if I need to, and then key it in the Moldvay style which does not bear repeating. I generally stock these with one trap, at least, some undead, maybe a spider variant because we all agree that such are suitable. Whatever smatterings of imaginary treasure you might be inclined to include are between you and your demigod of choice. Forbearance is better than too much treasure which is apt to derail the entirety of the game. I have a very interesting font somewhere that I have used this method with and set the kerning and spacing to less than 0 and it practically draws an oubliette for you, but harnessing the spirits of the machine this way is heretical to some. Do as you will when you make a deathtrap is maybe too on the nose. We in the U.S. value diligence, efficiency, etc. ad nauseam but craftsmanship is often more highly prized for Calvinist reasons.

Get thee hence, I geas thee, and make a dunjon for thyself. Look up the ways of AOS if you are inclin'd, or not, it is less than nothing to me and I scoff at your efforts and laugh at your death cries!

Why do you tarry? Get thee hence!

Tablesmith Tables for Sharing

Been working on learning Tablesmith - a powerful tool and well worth the very modest investment in money and time. I crank out a couple of pages of NPCs, keyed rooms, books, and those kinds of things before sessions these days and then improv the whole thing like I gave it a lot of thought. The secret is, I did give it a great deal of thought but then I put much of it into a Tablesmith table and sort of flesh it out at game time because I arrive tired and harried after dealing with peoples' emotional distress and I don't like to prep. Procedural generation like this is very much more fun for me: I'm usually as amazed and bewildered as the players and we tend to have a good time with it. Keeping it as coherent as possible is one of the fun parts.

Last night, instead of sleeping, high on Thai Ice Tea and the rich sulfurous fumes of cheap grocery-store fireworks, I finished entering in Kabuki Kaiser's Random Monster tables from Ruins of The Undercity. I use it sometimes at the table to generate sandy, curse-infested things that feel like Middle Eastern Barrowmaze, and I reskin the normal-flavored monsters for space-age/star-wars-fantasy/DCC gonzo and GO MAN GO.

If you have any use for Tablesmith you can have them, and you know, tinker with them or what have you. I know that my good friends Bryan Mullins and Paul Wolfe of Mystic Bull might enjoy toying around with these. There's a link down at the bottom for a google drive, if I can get it to work. The contents are:

1. NMS_Moldvay Dungeon Level2.tab - a quick n dirty spit out of the Moldvay Basic D&D dungeon generation process
2. NMS_Moldvay Dungeon Stocking.tab - same as above, but for level 1 - you can twerk the parameters, IIRC, to get it to do levels 1,2 or 3
3. NMS_MoldvayWM1.tab - the Moldvay random monster lists, levels 1 through 3 with numbers appearing
4. NMS_Occupations.tab - this is a Threndian random job maker, sort of like a 0-level DCC occupation tool. It makes some jobs that I would give up to become an adventurer. Thrend is my in-brain setting. Sort of Alice in Wonderland meets WFRPG1e if it had a baby with Star Wars
5. NMS_Quirks.tab - I forgot where I stole this list from, probably from a good one on Abulafia (which if you're into random tables and know some coding better than me, you will find is an amazing free resource lovingly tended to by Dave Younce, my favorite DM of all time)
6. NMS_RoTUMoldvay.tab - the Moldvay process slung on top of the features, traps, and monsters of Kabuki Kaiser's Ruins of the Undercity - greatest Solo dungeon maker ever (Although Mad Monks of Kwantoom is a close second and has more of a lemongrass flavor)
7. NMS_RoTUWM.tab - all 10 intimidating levels of Ruins of The Undercity's Random Monsters Chart
8. NMS_Strange Books.tab - tweaked the Random Books provided with Tablesmith to have a more evil and Lovecraft-Mythosian feel to it. Also includes some changes to the book materials, binding, and sizes
9. NMS_Street Gangs.tab - basically, aggressive adjective and noun slapped together to make an interesting and sometimes hilarious (IMHO) gang name worthy of Necromunda, Ur-Hadad, Bastion, or my own Steam-/Diesel-/Elf-punk fantasy city Helleborine
10. Races of Thrend.tab - spits out some very weird (setting specific) races. Referenced in the Thrend Character generators
11. Thrend Character Generator.tab - DCC stats for meatshields, NPCs, gang-members, whatever. They're weird. Think Adventure Time plus Alice in Wonderland, plus Hellboy
12. Torturous Backstories.tab - Stolen from Coins and Scrolls blog. 500 ennui-filled character premises
13. Comma Delimited Rogues Gallery.tab - for my own use, to spit out tables full of nutjobs for making into easily-importable tables for InDesign
14. Dickensian Names.tab - my favorite, and what got me into Tablesmith. I essentially stole the name list from >>>HERE GOD BLESS THESE GOOD HEARTED PEOPLES<<< and twerked on it to make the names even more ludicrous and to spit out more than one at a go... God Bless You, Name Nerds!
15. Gothic Problems.tab - stolen from a Jane Austen-flavored RPG called Cruelity and Gothic Tales (which is something I've always wanted to play but haven't found the right group for). There's an updated version on RPGNow which is 2.00$. Just saying.
16. HHS1_Gear.tab - random gear stolen from my very own starting equipment tables in The Hounds of Halthrag Keep
17. NMS_Candy.tab - just a list of all the types of candy and Slurpee flavors I could think of, referenced in the Races of Thrend list. Into the Odd really got me thinking about gum and I like the idea of Candyland/Candy Kingdom gone evil and rotten. Remind me to finish that board game I thought of some time...
18. NMS_EvilBooks.tab - I think it's just names, referenced in the Strange Books .tab, above.
19. NMS_ExpandedJewelry.tab - the usual Jewelry list from Tablesmith, plus a bunch of other sorts I could find (mostly elaborate Indian jewelry). I think it references my Materials list, below 
20. NMS_Materials.tab - all kinds of fantasy and real-world metals, plus some other non-metallic materials from fiction. Originally appeared on Abulafia (which is still one of the best low-prep RPG resources a GM could want)

There you go. Very likely I'll TS-ify a couple more of my favorites from Halthrag Keep, and my Mysterious Undead Properties thingamajig. I also stole the names from Darkest Dungeon which is a very dreadful theft, and drove me to a brief bout of insanity and lecherous flagellations, but I've recovered.

HERE IS A LINK CROSS MY FINGERS HOPE IT TWERKS 

 

 
 

The Children of Gmork for RT/Inq28

I was looking at these Chaos Marines and Space Wolves bits, thinking about why I keep them, and I couldn't think of a good reason at that moment, and then the Internet showed me a very brief advertisement for a new GW skirmish game named Rogue Trader, I guess, but not the same one from 1986.

And I was going to use the SW bits for my Amber College Dungeonbowl kitbashery, just because, but it got me motivated some to sculpt some tabards and robes to put underneath all these leftover CSM  bits, and to use to make a Necromunda Chaos Cult with.

I think I will stat them up in RT1e and maybe convert to Necromunda 17 for a kick.

Interestingly, there is a work-up of Inq28 for Necromunda 2017, already! Which you can find on Yaktribe if you go looking!

Mostly, my ideas for the thing are based around:

Gmork, from the Neverending story. The big wolf that hunts Atreyu (Noah Hathaway, yo!). Servant of The Nothing, sent by The Manipulators to turn the people of Fantasia/Fantastica into Lies in the Real World. Starring: the GW Warg leader, or maybe just a Fenrisian wolf, a one of these barghests I have laying around.

This page of Tzeentch Chaos Renegades from the RT1 era. which I have seen painted all kinds of cool ways, and which I lusted after as a kid - let's face it, those RT Chaos SM were infintely weirder and cooler and more Xaos than the recent ones, which are still pretty cool.

This illustration of what must be CSM but which I took to be a very very weird regular space marines picture, because in my pre-teen mind I made no clear distinction between the good guys and bad guys and maybe even RT didn't make a good distinction, either?

And to use up all these Space Wolves bits and turn them to Evil Ends. I really sort of want to sculpt and cast a squad's worth of filthy, tattered tabards and weird biomechanical neck veins and horned skull helmets and weird insectile-robot arms.

anyways, a cult of Chaos Undivided/Malloc that is bent on dissolution and annhilitaion of everything, not just some dumb aggression.  Fill in the gaps with robots, adeptae mechanicae scumbags, and converted IG and gang-types

We'll see! Fingers crossed.  The Emperor is a Corpse! The Nothing is Coming!

Foul and Deep and Poopy

ALL THIS SEWER DELVING IS GIVING ME THE SPOTS

Let's talk for a second about the term 'Fatberg', shall we?

I can do that. I'm a dad. I can say 'poopy' and without irony and it's totally fine. I say to normal adults all the time "HEY MAN I GOTTA GO POTTY BE RIGHT BACK" before I even understand what is coming out of my mouth. It's a byproduct of fatherhood, and I hope that one day it will pass. I would never say SHIT at my house unless my kid was asleep since, excuse me!, that's a potty word.

A disclaimer, here. I kept hearing about the Barrowmaze a couple years ago. I guess I'd been out of the RPG scene for a long time, maybe 12 to 15 years depending how you reckon it. I was looking for PbP forums to get back into it, sort of low-commitment. Heh! Don't let anybody tell you that PbP is low commitment, by the by. Anyway, I stumbled upon Daniel Bishop's Barrowmaze PbP and quickly found I had little knowledge of the system (DCC) and not nearly enough time to stay on top of it, and so I found GeePlus and thus was history. I wouldn't have found DCC without lagging behind in Daniel's game, and so I shelled out the squibs for a PDF and haven't been impressed like that since maybe the first time I read my AD&D1e DMG!

I have a soft spot for DCC, and Daniel Bishop's stuff. There. I coulda said just that and been fine.

I picked up "Both Foul and Deep" which appeals to the "Underground Explorer" part of my brain. I think when we think of adventures in sewers, we think of "Big Trouble In Little China", the escape from Ladyhawke, and the only other examples I can recall are like C.H.U.D. and some really awful scenes in Aliens Vs. Predator II, and maybe I guess the climax of "IT" by Stephen King. For those, it's drippy water, narrow walkways, and rats. Lots of rats. There's an Indian Jones sewer scene. A lot of CRPGs start with Rats in Sewers. Elder Scrolls: Arena. Lots of Neverwinter Nights freebie modules (i think the sewer steam tunnel set was one of the better ones). I think that we ROMANTICIZE the fantasy sewer, oddly enough, and think that it's a good place to have adventures. We're probably REALLY thinking of the Catacombs of Paris and London and Rome when we think about sewer adventures, when in reality a sewer crawl would be awful, wet, cramped, and torturous. I think this may be the first product I've ever seen that really addresses just how much SHIT you'd find and how sick you'd get if you are so bold and rather let's say FOOLHARDY to go into the sewers of any medieval metropolis, fantasy or no (in reality, I don't think we really had sewers until the early part of the modern era, like maybe late 1800 's early 1900's).

There is a lot of poop in this product. A lot of feces. A torrent of shit. A river of shit. A lot of slime, sewage, and disease. Plenty of awful monsters that have poopy abilities and none would be a good way to die, and all of them would probably not be fun to fight. There's some rationale for having humanoid/human encounters in the sewers - really everybody and everything else you meet down there are likely to be desperate and murderous or at least have the potential for it.

There's a brief adventure/starter with some novel encounters, a couple of dozen new monsters (terrifying owing to their ferocity and filthiness),  also a DCC Patron at the end. I would bond a PC to the Patron Squallas just to drown an enemy in an extradimensional river of shit just one time.

The production values are high, the writing is intelligent and terse, and the Carrion Moth and the Phantom Gentleman are worth the reasonable price of admission. The question remains: how would I tempt the PC's to enter into the accurately-rendered shitty environs of the sewers of say the 3e Ravenloft undercity of Paridon? Poop smells bad! Poop in a toilet smells bad! Poop in the open smells bad (I drove by Tijuana once, I'm just saying)! Poop on the inside the endless world beneath the toilet probably also smells bad!

Fatberg. Look it up!

The Myriad Races of Thrend

I was hacking away at a .TAB file, tryin' to learn Tablesmith coding, which I'm not learning very terrifically just yet but anywho. It's not hard I just no longer have a brain for it, really.

I made a "Random Races" list, so I guess of races that I would allow in my DCC game without much fuss. That is, I envision a world in which there's been a giant apocalypse long ago that hurled the multiverse together in a big squishy, anachronistic, and practically fluff-free fashion.  Alls we know is there's been, long ago, some cataclysm, and now we're all here. More adventuretime or Planescape than Dragonlance for sure.

I admit I'm a little maybe too open about it, and I don't particularly like it when players try to get mechanical bennies from what seems to me to be purely descriptive chunks of detail.  I don't know why I think like that, as a matter of fact the adjudication of the thing ought to be that Fishmen can breathe water and Robots are immune to sleep spells, etc. It would go like that in Into the Odd or Maze Rats, so I don't know why I'm mildly uptight about it in DCC... I ought to take a deeper look at that down the road. Introspection is good in small doses.

Anyways, here's the .TAB file copied n pasted. Some of the options can get a little reiterative, for example you could have a Dreamlands Shadow Alternate Dimesional Candy Person but that's going to be suitably rare at these rates! And of course, looking at the clumsy code I realize that I coulda just saved 5 or 6 lycanthrope spots and put the "Were-" prefix and [SEE ANIMAL SUBTYPE], which I actually did later. The Were-subtypes'll be a lot less common that the normal run of the mill ones, I guess. There's ways to rule out those sorts of combinations, but hey. Weirder the better, IMHO. What's the difference between an Upright Wolf and a Werewolf? Duh. A long long time ago I was thinking about perk-buy methods and it seems to me that these could all be tidied up that way...

Maybe I ought to break my own bad habits and do some stat mods and perks associated with all these races, but meh: we can wing it.

#
# Races of Thrend
#
# By Noah Stevens

:Start
1-20,Human
22,Elf
22,Dwarf
23,Sea Blood
24,Derro
25,Voormis
26,Ape
27,White Ape
28,Mutant
29,Cyborg
30,Synthoid
31,Wood Golem
32,Clay Golem
33,Revenant
34,Wereboar
35,Werewolf
36,Wererat
37,Weretiger
38,Dog
39,Rabbit
40,Kenku
41,Scrappler
42,Robot
43,Cloth Golem
44,Straw Man
45,Winged Monkey
46,Businessman
47,Vampire
48,Quasilich
49,Neanderthal
50,Mongrelman
51,Zomborg
52,Pumpkinhead
53,Tinperson
54,Hyooman
55,Clockwork Person
56,Porcelain Golem
57,Dark Elf
58,Dark Dwarf
59,Wood Elf
60,Scavvie
61,Blinker
62,Upright {Cap~[Creatures]}
63,Newhon Ghoul
64,Grey Man
65,Blue Man
66,Subhuman
67,Atlantean
68,Yuan-Ti
69,Slug Man
70,Candy Person
71,Food Person
72,Cimmerian
73,Ur-Men
74,Centaur
75,Satyr
76,Goblin
77,Gnome
78,Kappa
79,Githyanki
80,Moon Dweller
82,Dralasite
83,Yazirian
84,Bug Person
85,Pixie
86,Faerie
87,Fay {Cap~[Creatures]}
88,Dreamlands [Start]
89,Shadow [Start]
90,Alternate Dimensional [Start]
91,Were[Creatures]

:Creatures
1-3,bear
4-5,boar
6-9,bull
10,cow
11,horse
12-13,hound
14-15,lamb
16-19,lion
20-22,serpent
23-25,stag
26-27,tiger
28-30,wolf
31,sturgeon
32,elk
33,badger
34,hare
35,bat
36,lizard
37,squirrel
38-40,fox
41,dolphin
42-43,panther
45-46,ram
47,goat
48,beaver
49,mountain lion
50,tortoise
51,pike
52,frog
53,rat
54,mare
55,stallion
56,plowhorse
57,ox