Spreading the Love Around with some Reviewage and Digressions

I buy a good number of low-cost (but high quality) RPG things every week. I try to limit myself to about 10 to 20 bucks weekly, and usually try to pick up a good deal when I can... I hope I'm not running people out of business with my thrift!

Anyways, I saw mention on one person's blog that there wasn't a review out for his thing yet, and frankly I am amazed since it's all kind of fun. at least on paper.

Just looking at my queue in RPGNow, it appears I have about 666 things to review if I were going to do it right, including a lot of Crawl! stuff, many of the things by Purple Sorcerer and Purple Duck, Goodman Games modules and a wide range of little tiny indy things. I wonder if maybe it must be hard to survive and thrive in this industry because I imagine that each little thing has a niche... You pour your heart and soul into things and it turns out of course the other 4 people in the world who love EXACTLY the same subset of Mechanoid Cowboy Schoolgirls Dungeon RPGs Feminist Narrative Gaming are of course going to buy it but the whole rest of the RPG world is focused on their own stuff.

Alright, here goes (in no particular order) - all the stuff on here came from RPGNow, I think.

Go Fer Yer Gun! by Beyond Belief Games

I was interested in incorporating some Wild West/Frontier elements into my DCC game, in the vein of Spaghetti Westerns.  I'm not sure if this thing was free at the time, but since I picked it up it's gone down to free.  You could do worse than to head over and grab it.  It has some pretty good character classes that fulfill most of the American and Italian Western traditions, and I'm finding with only a little bit of mental gymnastics they could be incorporated into almost any OSR game.  I think they must be based on some version of d20, which makes it pretty easy to drop them into a Flailsnails thing if they are so inclined.  I am having visions of PCs with Colt revolvers mowing down bad guys for a couple of scenarios and then having the tables turned when the cultists hire/incorporate gunslingers into their own crews, gunslingers who happen to be undead or something.  I don't know, Weird West.  The good thing about this work is that it doesn't have any Fantasy or Weird or Steampunk elements on top already, and it has stats in the back for a wide range of real frontier men and women from the American West.  Hey YMMV - it's free.  The production values are pleasingly simple and it's well-made, and the combat is not as wonky as (for example) Boot Hill or GURPS: Wild West or whatever it was...  I like this, and it's too bad these micro-publishers aren't all switched over to a PWYW model, since... I digress again.

Crawl! #9 "The Arwich Grinder" by Daniel Bishop

I try not to gush whenever I read or review something by Daniel Bishop, and the Crawl! series in general is pretty great.  Daniel's practically running the show on a small corner of the DCC universe and it seems he doesn't slow down, or if he does slow down then he must have a backlog of stuff waiting to be published... (note: I think this is actually the case).  Disclosure:  I love H.P. Lovecraft - like many of the people who might read this blog, Ol' Granpa landed on me in my formative years, after I got some references in the Deities and Demigods and found him in my High School library in maybe the 10th grade.  So it goes for many of us, yeah?  This story is so common, and creative people know HPL so well that the popular culture is inundated with Cthulhu references and He Who Sleeps in R'l'yeh A-Waiting is cutesy-fied and belittled and now Mythos elements are creeping up on Primetime TV!  I don't do TV so I can't watch it, but it's for the best since I don't need my Sanity blasted any further.  If I were paranoid, I would say... but anyways I digress.

This funnel adventure draws upon one of my favorite hair-raising Lovecraft stories that doesn't itself contain Mythos elements, and then pops that story into the context of a Weird Fantasy world.  I won't tell you which one, but if you gobbled down lustily all of Lovecraft's works in your youth like I did, I imagine your ears will perk up like mine did in about 5 seconds and your hairs will be on end in short order.  In fact, it appears that Bishop anticipates this and maybe it happened even in playtesting since there is reference to a way to handle stubborn players who won't get with the flow of the fiction...  An attempt to curb a lifetime of player knowledge, probably, in a subsection of the population whose fandom would never allow them to eat something from those generous woodsy folks who never come into town except to buy salt and nitrates.

I think that this'd be a great way to get a funnel group started in a low-magic Weird Fantasy campaign, or even as an interlude in a normal campaign, maybe to set events up for a party of ass-kickers to find what's left of the first group...  The TPK would be satisfying but not a foregone conclusion, although it does appear (on paper) to be pretty dangerous.  I've not played it yet but I found that, like the story it's based on, the more I read, the more I knew for certain what was coming next until the inevitable conclusion hits with a horrendous wet smack, or a dribble of unidentifiable fluid from the rafters above...  This anxious expectation is IMHO the whole hook of this adventure; the wide-eyed grinning certainty and terror that you know for sure what is happening already and that finding the truth is the only inevitable outcome, and maybe if the gods are with you, your hero can put a stop to it...

The art is great and moody, and suitably horrific - even the maps!  I wouldn't probably want my kid to get her hands on it until she's about 13 or 14, but YMMV.  Not for the faint of heart, for sure.

Also, by the way, if you want a hair-raising rendition of the story this adventure is based on, you really can't do better than to listen to THIS on a lonely car-ride home some dark and stormy night. Whatever you do, don't pull over or get hungry while you're listening, or it'll cost you serious Sanity.  I'm not joking, I've read this particular story a thousand thousand times, in fact you could say the copy I own sometimes just falls open to this page, and when I heard this thing on my iPod I almost pissed my pants.

Unlikely Heroes: OSR Races by Nordic Weasel Games

I say this a good deal:  I don't like elves.  Not the ones I see today, anyway; things were different for elves back in the old days.  One thing I like about DCC is that they are given to you mildly different, mechanically (but not by much), and slightly alien.  From the get-go, you're aligned to something else and the normal world doesn't fit you correctly.  This is different from the usual contemporary rendition of elves as this gauzy ubermensch with beautiful hair, THANKS PETER JACKSON.  I may hate Legolas simply because I came up on the Rankin-Bass thing in which the elves really did look alien and unsettlingly different from humans, and not just like supermodels with pointy ears...  Anyway, I digress.

This is geared toward OSR games, and it's ostensibly for people like me, who don't mind Chocolate in their Peanut Butter and Rice Noodles.  OK, bad metaphor, but you'll find in this a Catman, a towering pacifist Rockman Warrior, Werewolves, Bugmen, Skaven-type Ratties, Weird Dwarfs, Androgyne Treepeople, Cosmic Elves, a variety of half-human races, and (most interesting, to my mind) a smattering collection of normal human subtypes.  I haven't incorporated it into my game at all, but I like it on paper, since I went on a Talislanta bender a couple of weeks ago (by the by, all that stuff is free!) in the interests of thinking about class and race differently.  It's pretty reasonably priced, and a good resource for a game that needs something slightly different.  It is well put-together, simple, and clean, with few typos and a scattering of public domain art.  Nothing too out of the ordinary, here, and it highlights that most gamers want bilateral symmetry and roughly humanoid shape in their fantasy RP.  Which reminds me, I need to work on that "WEIRD-ASS ALIEN RACES FOR FANTASY RP" thing, essentially a crib of stuff from Star Frontiers and some other more gonzo sources...  Alas, I have no originality in me, since there is nothing new under the suns.

Shorty Monster's guide to Historical weapons in RPGs by Shortymonster

I don't know, this one kept coming up as a recommendation for me, and the price was right, and then I had it on my wishlist to take a look at.  It's very brief at 12 pages, put together in a simple way, and very informative.  Shortymonster is evidently a history buff, and this is all background and no mechanics.  He has some pictures culled from open sources (I think) and you will think of things differently - particularly the use of two-handed swords and sling bullets - after you read this. It's worth it at the price it's offered at.  And it's good to support a wide range of biodiversity in publishers, I think.  My favorite part?  The information on the Murder Strike and the making of sling bullets.

That's all for now: next review will be The Croaking Fane and the wide range of stuff I've collected for the ASE (not that either of these will need reviews from me, but they are pretty fun)

Progress - Cracking the Whip on The Hounds of Halthrag Keep

It may seem, with all the games I take part in (flash forward to tomorrow's post maybe) and the fatherhood I am doing, like I must never get anything else done.  This is mostly true. I've given up on Spelunky, for example.  However, keen readers, worry not!  For I am creeping incrementally toward the goals I've set, not nearly as fast as I'd like but nevertheless the words and ideas are falling out apace.

Don't believe me?  Well, hurr hurr hurr, I am making arrangements for cover art and interior illustrations!  I have written (as I said before) all the Random Encounters and the modified DCC rules to use in the course of solo play.

Here is the node-web of fighty events that attach themselves to the somewhat more baroque and tangled one that is the main plot of the game book:

The tangled web I've weaved.

I've left the resolution low so that you can't see any clever solutions.  Purple nodes in this diagram mean "questionable ends" in which the player survives but it's not an ideal ending (to me).  Red boxes IIRC lead to other entries in the main quest line.  Black is, naturally, an ignominious death - like when the cruel gods of the Choose Your Own Adventures squashed you into oblivion and made you feel foolish.  I think the dark blue ones are clues or items, but I'm not telling.

The two bigger branches represent "night encounters" vs. "day encounters" and rely upon a pretty crude time-keeping device that affects the states of some entries.  The whole of Halthrag Keep is going to be littered with junk, space rocks, rusty weapons, singed Black Grimoires, dead bodies, the occasional silver coin, and (of course) titanic struggles for the souls of men and women in the cosmic battle of Law versus Chaos.

If you're keen to see it, maybe I can drop the text of the first couple entries to wet your whistle, Adventurer!

I assure you, if you don't despise Diptherio from the very start of the chase, you will by the time you climb out of the river, fleeing for your life!

Dungeon Master M.O. - what works for me (longish so sue me)

A discussion on G+ prompted me to think about what has worked and what hasn't for my online play via Hangouts (thanks to +Claytonian JP  for the idea).  I've run lots of DCC this way, and sprinkled in some Dungeon World-y bits, with a couple of mutants and a black streak of Carcosa.

1. Keep it to less than 5 people, DM included, if possible.  In an OSR game with lots of henchies, or a 5 person funnel, this can get pretty wild and hard to keep track of with more. If you happen to like a VTT like Roll20.net this can really bog down when everybody's moving their little icons.  In that case, you better just scrap the icon thing altogether, although it does have benefits (dice, chat stuff). I think Roll20'd be better if users could save personal macros, which (fuck if I know) they might be able to do, but I never think of it - even when I was dropping the fee every month.
2. Keeping track.  I go right across the little name bar at the bottom.  Divide one piece of paper into columns corresponding to player.  Then...
3. For each player, have them introduce their characters by name and occupation (for funnels), or by name and class and a blurb.  Nothing too elaborate, just enough for me to jot down in the player's column the name and class and (possibly) Luck score, just in case.  If the Wizard is evil or something, and Chaotic, then I make a note of it.  Dogs and familiars and companion animals go in the column.  Henchies don't get a Luck score, but I try to get a feel for how fast I want them to die (men-at-arms and cultists may as well paint a target on the front, unless they are particularly fun or you can and will do a funny voice)
4. I like games in which resource management is an issue, especially torches and lanterns.  One, when the lights go out naturally or on purpose due to water or wind or darkness spells, and only the demihumans can see and the random encounter roll says the cultists are herding a group of undead your way, well, a brief pause can motivate players. Do you want to relight the torches?  Hunker down and ready for combat in the darkness?  Gygax said that no meaningful campaign can happen without time tracking - I use the Labyrinth Lord one that's out there with the little check boxes but there are more elaborate ways.  Two, I mean, that shit costs money and my dungeons are generally stingy as all hell.  Your guy is gonna work his ass off for full plate in this thing and I'm gonna soak you for gold like a Cathayan Silk Trader.
5. I try to keep it to 1 night = 1 delve and back to town, unless multiple delves happen owing to briefness/serious casualties/need for more flasks of oil.  This usually turns into about 5 or 6 good encounters in 3 or 4 hours of play.
6. I try to keep the game calendar and the real-world calendar aligned, and the weather in the game is for the most part what my weather looked like today.  This saves me a couple of charts and shit, and if a guy Spellburns 25 hit points, we all know when he'll be back to full strength - I ask that the players remember this stuff and be honest (I have a vague memory for this stuff and like to say O PODRICK YOUR STRENGTH IS STILL LOW SINCE YOU BURNED IT ALL ON THAT COLOR SPRAY LAST WEEK, RIGHT? MINUS THREE TO YOUR ATTACKS HURR HURR HURR)
7. Never forget to check for wandering monsters!  Even if it's a little old school, the clatter of dice every other turn or when Frilbo and Dergolips the Elf bump into the empty cask or when PCs (i.e. players) are arguing, I mean, that's magic.  That's motivation, right there.  Unity, as one stand together.  No quibbling and/or pouting.  There are some schools of thought that say "ITS AN ART!  THE DM SHOULD PLAN ALL THE ENCOUNTERS!"  I say, and you can quote me, fuck that.  
8. If I have a group of folks I trust and that are good roleplayers, I'm almost always inclined to go Dungeon Scout's Honor on rolls.  I used to say that St. Issek abhors a fudger, but Ygg and Justicia forgive when the fudge is for the sake of dramatic tension and epic awesomeness.  On the other hand, that fucker that pulls the Mighty Deed off every goddamn round, or regularly gets 19s and 20s on the spellcheck roll gets to use the online dice roller in Roll 20.  Nobody's dice are that good, and I trust and love the players but Death and Judgment are Omnipresent and waiting like Vultures for those that cheat their friends of drama.  This is a little paradoxical, but hey.  I have recently begun to fudge dice DOWNWARD when I'm not running things, so that this one green d20 I have doesn't irritate people (I mean, I got like 4 18s and 19s in a row the other night and it looked suspicious to me, also).  For DCC, the Clerical Disapproval and Wizard Corruption is (to my mind) nothing to be afraid of and is just as good - if not better than - straight exemplary successes.
9. You gotta put up with a rules lawyer every so often - it is good for the Spirit and builds character. Hold on there, Squire.  We'll get back to this.
10. Turns are turns.  You go in order from left to right, according to the icon I have at the bottom of the Hangout.  I try to be firm.  We announce the turn, I give a description (maybe longer if I have been drinking) of what's happening, mark my little hashmark on the light/spell duration thingamabob, and I try to do my best to keep shit flowing smoothly.  If a person is droning on and on and sucking up the spotlight the whole time, I try to snip it a little and keep everybody in the game.  If that one guy is not talking too much and his cleric seems sad or whatever, "Hey Goodbert the Wise, what are you doing this turn?"  Communing with Justicia, asking for guidance?  Poking/gently caressing that sarcophagus?  Day dreaming of the elven thief lass with the fiery hair and regretting your vows of celibacy?  Awesome!  +1 Luck, sir.  Now look lively.  It's the DM's gig to keep everybody in the game and participating, and to keep it moving.  If some fucker that wandered in to the game is running over everybody's good time, then you gotta be in a leadership position to quell it.  I mean, nobody likes a tyrannical overlord asshole, but it's not telephone conversation: it's for groups (with obvious exceptions)
11. If I can roll a bunch of dice at once, I try to. For example, we discuss that 5 turns pass, requiring 3 encounter rolls, I roll 3d6 instead of one at a time.  Similarly, it's a good idea in big upbeat combats to try to do an attack and damage (and deed die) together, just to move the thing along.  When you are a player, be ready to shout out your shit and the result and pipe down unless you've been slain or something., in which case gurgle feebly for help.  Nobody likes that guy "MMMMMMMMMM.   OKKAAYYYY.  WELL, CAN I GET TO THAT ONE RATICENTIBLIN, THE ONE WITH 1HP?  IS IT IN RANGE OF MY LONGBOW FROM HERE?  OR CAN I RUN UP AND WHACK IT AND THEN RETREAT ANdronedronedronedronedronedronezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz".  I mean, your Barbarian is frothing at the lips in a swansong of hellfury, and this guy is mincing about asking about how many actions is uncorking his potion and string his bow and shooting?  I mean, come on, man (NEXT ROUND YOU ARE AT THE END OF THE INITIATIVE CHAIN).  Lately, I have weighed asking everyone to roll initiative every turn like in the old days but that's generally too much work for my players and we... You know what, I'm droning.  Sorry.
12. I don't think DCC calls for a screen, since I put the onus on players that have the game to refer to their own charts, but I do have a rarely-used binder that has some random treasure things and I made a couple of easy-to-refer to monster charts for Barrowmaze.  DCC has lots of random charts and I think maybe the handiest one would be the Turning Undead since I can never remember that stuff. The core mechanic's pretty simple at the heart of it.  YMMV if you have some big and bogged down thing with bloaty tentacles and such - I tried to hack a 3.5 version Shaman into a L/L Druid the other day and fuck, I don't know what an Awareness Feet is.  Fuck it, like a +3 to listen for goblins or something?
13. We've taken to using the chat bar in all the online games to post initiative rolls, names of characters and NPCs, important loot (and unimportant loot), whatever needs a temporary record to refer back to.
14. In combat, not every miss needs an edit - that is, not all the shots need be described.  I say "A solid blow.  A ringing blow.  It's staggered."  Keep the players guessing the AC, since you know they are keeping track on the other side of the screen over there.  A particularly dramatic slaying ought to be optioned to the player "Okay Parthenus the Warrior, how do you slay this thing?"  If somebody won't do it (but why?  this is an RPG!) then it's your cool.  A droog or minion can just crumple into a puddle of blood, moaning.  But serious deaths need some gore and shrieking.
15. I like to not tell players NO and use a simple Improv approach to things.  I try not to say what players are doing unless no one says anything, or else their declared actions don't take up the allotted passed time.  I will work with you as hard as I can to get that thing to go if it's fun, except if you are breaking the implicit or explicit rules - even then if you can give a plausible explanation, or a fun roleplayed one that fleshes out the shared narrative or your character, or the relationship with other characters, fuck it, let's see what happens.  We have dice and time and we are ADVENTURING, lets go out on a limb a little bit and bend these rules to cracking so that we can see what kinda fun comes through.
16. What I said about rules-lawyers before, I mean, for some folks the rules-lawyers thing IS the game, and I try to be friendly and accommodating but all it takes is for you to squeeze my balls or pout or back track to an earlier scene to recover a couple of hit points or experience or copper pieces, and then (I hate to be a dick this way) I take a business-like, hard-boundary thing.  I try not to bullshit and I like to think I can back down when I am being a rat-fuck asshole, but if it comes to it next time maybe you're welcome to join but I won't tap you a couple of times before the game starts because we already have 5 players, man, and you said you might have something else going on.
17. On the other hand, you sort of need to let more charismatic PLAYERS be good leaders, also.  It's a magical thing to watch when everybody is polite and funny and having a good time and everybody steps up and zings and riffs and I don't have to be some field marshal but rather a conductor.  I don't give a fuck how many XP you got or gold or whatever.  When the stories and jokes flow like cheap wine and we can all give each other a knowing wink down the road, that's why I run games.  Also, I'm a power-hungry ego maniac, but I mean, that's a given a priori thing we all agree.
18. I don't like FLAILSNAILSing, as a matter of preference.  One reality at a time ought to be pretty exciting for your average low-magic grungy dungeon murderhobo.  I think it's poor form for a guy to have a pack of comrades scrabbling for iron rations and go off to Dimension X and come back 30 XP on with a Vorpal Hammer and Plate Armor of Goldbricking.  Causes bad feelings.  In me.  When I see all my hordes of monsters laid low I just get bitchy.  I had a pretty good discussion some months back when some guys schooled me and set me straight and called me out on my narrow-mindedness about it.  For this I thank them, and the odd guy with nothing to do that comes wandering in, as long as you're existentially compatible and not Mann Rider when we are malnourished dungeon raiders (actually happened once), I mean, hey.  Cling to your long-developed narrative if you like.  Ahem.  God Bless Mann Rider, BTW.  I am trying to stay true to my "try a new random character every play session thing" - it's working out lately.  I think people ought to try it.  Anyways, more on that some other time.
19. Lastly, stinginess with treasure and magic makes for a richer experience, in my humble opinion.  A glut of gains easily gotten becomes under-appreciated and the next thing you know, you've written some droning awful high-minded treatise...  I mean, if you're gonna give a magic-item, make it one the PCs are loathe to use except in the most dire of circumstances (they always sell this shit when they get back to town rather than try to seduce the bound murderous water nymph, but hey, it woulda been fucking awesome to watch in play).  This is a Gygaxian truism but it's not going to hold for all games. That's it, I'm out.  

Also, tonight I found a bunch of cool Gamma World shit at:

http://www.paforge.com/

Which I think can easily become part of the ASE/Carcosa/DCC/Star Frontiers/Mutant Future thing that is dribbling around in my ears.  I've sucked up so much OSR stuff that now I am stuck in some pastiche of 1981,which is okay I guess but I really need to check FIASCO and Monsterhearts off the old list.

Downward! into Barrowmaze Again... ?

Coming up on the anniversary of the Scourge of the Barrowmaze campaign - a thing that lasted 6 or 7 months last year and brought me a good deal of fun times.  At that time, I was inspired by +Dave Younce 's IRON CANYONS campaign (soon to be rebooted?) - I was struck by the simple return into a relatively easy format of a game I loved.  You may say that the "Dungeon Crawl Hack and Slash" is a bit crusty - well, you oughtn't to say it but I guess you could.

But there is unlife in those bones, yet.

Witness the nextest iteration of BARROWMAZE

I hope this becomes funded - I am unable to fund it at the "Little Guys" level, and I probably can't even do it at the lowest level until maybe early next month, but it's a great setting and always ratcheted up the tension.  As much as I want a box of all those little plastic (or metal? some alien alloy?) figs, almost the entirety of my RPG'ing these days comes over the G+ pipes and the figs would be frowned upon by my wife (she still doesn't like the box of Space Marines taking up square footage in the back bedroom).  Also, my latest favoritest all-consumingest game lately is "DADDY" in which my levels are fairly low but quest opportunities abound.

If you've come here looking for DCC character classes, know full well that Barrowmaze is the ideal vehicle to slaughter a funnel full of sub-heroes, and also it's great fun to laugh as the survivors flee in terror back to Helix across the moors!  If you feel particularly cruel, you can have ghouls or bandits chase them almost the whole way, having eaten/stolen their horses and the digging crew they left to watch them.

Muwahahaha!

I released these to the G+ DCC community last year in the late spring, but 'ere you go, in the interests of making more flubaloo around Greg's awesome project.  You will find a "better than doing it on the fly" conversion of the monsters from Barrowmaze I to DCC stats.  There's also a combined Random Monster Encounters for my campaign which includes some monstrosities hell-bent on vengeance against the party, and a secretive clan of reptilian ghoul worshippers.  The entries include all kinds of opportunity to Hell to bust out in the middle of the tomb-quiet hallways, which of course degenerates into a "eat your brains" free for all.

1.  Barrowmaze I common critters with DCC stats
2.  Turbocharged BMI+BM2 random encounter tables

I had a plan to DCC statify all the Barrowmaze monsters in all the encounters throughout the text (something that +Paul Wolfe inspired me to do) but, there's an awful lot of variety and it comes to like 150 different monsters and then the baby came in August.

I also have a "mildly improved" list of awful random properties to add onto Undead Encounters, but I will hold off on that since I'm enchanting it a little stronger.

I might reboot the campaign - if you're interested, then drop me a line - or even better, just join the community on G+ and say so.  You can find the funnel generator for it at the Purple Sorcerer here (this is my opportunity to connect +Greg Gillespie and +Jon Marr who have done a bunch to get me excited in RPGs again). If you are interested in a paper version of the d200-something funnel occupations chart for the thing, to see what classes I was hoping to include into it, then that can be found here. Warning: madness abounds, there - I was inspired by Discworld, Gamma World, Ravenloft, Lovecraft, and Realms of Crawling Chaos.

The Scourge of the Barrowmaze is sort of an attempt to instill Ravenloft-style Gothic Horror and Post-Apocalyptic (think ASE) despair onto a traditional Dungeon Crawl Hack n Slash vehicle.  We never made it too far into the actual BM complex, since almost without exception the party was swamped by random groups of undead or surface-venturing parties of looters or cultists.  The community design is a pale rip-off of the Labyrinth Lord Roll20.net Barrowmaze game hosted lovingly by +Jason Paul McCartan.  His is an absolute model of what a campaign community ought to look like - frankly I don't know how he does it what with his other commitments.

I usually don't get into the crowdfunding for reasons that others may better explain, but this setting in particular has given me a lot of good times and I wish it well and Greg good luck.  Also, it would be fun to see even more hideous evil unearthed.

Sed multa bona in vita habuerunt, et aurum eorum aemuli (Mucking your texts up with Google Translate)

Late-night thinking about Markov Chains and textual analysis brought me to this.  I know/suspect/intuit that I am not the first to posit this process, but I mentioned it J.D. on the DCCRPG community and thought I would share the inputs and outputs.  The text I've entered is hideous fluffy stuff from my Ssessarid tomb map from a few posts back, thusly:

"The entrance is an underground dome with a basin, guarded by caryatid columns who will attack if the players do not cleanse themselves in the basin's waters, first (Although this carries a risk of disease).  Packs of ghouls crawl from the various holes in the structure and broke free to maraud when the hidden entrance was revealed in a rock slide.  The whole complex is highly trapped - the Ssessarids loved Blue Cobra poison and the disfiguring scars that remain should interlopers not die shortly after injection.  At the far end of the complex, 'asleep' on his bier, lies the body of the clan's founder, a ghul sorceror of some potency who does not hesitate to call upon his patron's representative - an elegant Naga with the face of a seductress.  She has ties to the Yuan-Ti, and the crafty Serpent Men who first taught the clan to use and distill poisons, and who coached them in the arts of subterfuge.  Since the geological event that re-opened the tomb, the ghul raiders have swept into the nearby town nightly to feast on children, the elderly, and local beggars.  They had much wealth in life, and are jealous of their gold."

Here is the text in Google Latin (I always quake in fear of Latin owing to difficulties I had in college with it):

"Introitus est sub firmamento cum pelvim, custodiuntur a columnis caryatid si quis invadet histriones non mundarentur in pelvim aquae scriptor primum (quamquam non caret periculo morbo). Sarcinas de ghouls repunt e cavis compages varii ac fregit liberum maraud absconditum introitum, quando revelata est in rockslide. Toto complexu sit altus capti - Lorem Cobra est uenenum Ssessarids dilexit foedans et cicatricum manere debet mori interlopers non multo post iniectio. Ad usque finem complexus, 'dormit,' in lecto, iacentem, corpus gentis conditor, a ghul sorceror aliquam potentiam qui non dubitavit appellare patroni repraesentativum - elegantem Naga cum facie LENA. Habet ties ad Ti-Yuan, et callidi serpentis Qui primus docuit uti familia et venena et descendant, et qui in artibus quoque subterfugium illatum eos. Cum sodales id quod re-aperuit monumentum ghul populatores delevi in proximum oppidum nocturnis convivium pueris, senibus, ac locorum mendici. Sed multa bona in vita habuerunt, et aurum eorum aemuli."

It appears that Firefox-form Google Translate dry heaves at the poor Latin prose my poor English prose generates.  Firefox just wouldn't do it, but after a moment's hesitation, the mules in the back of Google Chrome (no doubt flogged relentlessly) made this - which I like better than my own starting text in some ways:

"Entrance into the expanse of the basin, guarded by columns CARYATIDES if any players not be overcome with purified water in the basin's first (though it carries a risk of disease). Packs of ghouls crawl out of their holes in the structure of various and broke free maraud secret entrance, when it was revealed in rockslide. Aggregate is highly trapped - Welcome Ssessarids Cobra venom is loved and disfiguring scars remain interlopers should die shortly after injection. At the far end of the complex, 'sleeps' in bed, lying down, the body of the founder of the nation, from Ghulam sorceror some power who do not hesitate to call a representative of the patron - a handsome face with Nagai PANDERESS. It contains whenever he turns up the Ti-yuan, and was the first of a discreet man who has taught us to make use of the family of the serpent, poisons, go down, and those in the arts of subterfuge also inflicted on them. When the members and re-opened the tomb to the next, I have destroyed the town of Ghulam Raiders of the nightly feast for children, old people, and the local beggars. But they have had many good things in life, and their gold rivals."

Panderess?  That's good.  Note, the all caps are Google's, not mine.  I think it's a neat thing, and I wonder what could be got by using e.g. Urdu or Arabic or French.  Wait - why wonder?  Here is the output from the Gujarati iteration, which appears beautiful and sinister in plain text form, like a basket of poisonous Nagai:

"Players into the basin's waters, the attack will not cleanse himself, guarded by a caryatid column is a basin with an underground dome, (although this carries the risk of disease). Packs of Ghouls crawled from holes and hidden in the structure of a rockslide was revealed to be a robbery, breaking free. The whole complex is very trapped - Ssessarids Blue Cobra venom is loved and disfiguring scars interlopers that should not die soon after injection. The face of a seductress with a magnificent Naga - at the end of the complex away from the 'asleep' on his bier, clan founder's body, do not hesitate to call on behalf of his patron, a ghul sorceror some strength lies. He has ties to the Yuan-Ti, and taught the first descent of the Serpent Men astute use poisons and distill, and were trained in the arts of subterfuge. Tomb reopened to the geological phenomenon, ghul raiders children, the elderly and to feast on the local beggars night is swept up in a nearby town. He lives in a property, and is jealous of his gold."

Substantially the same, but different enough to make it confusing and misleading and perfect for throwing impetuous players into the maws of some beast. Muwahaha.  Mayhap Google Translate could be a tool you use in your campaign, I dunno.  Just a fun time sink.

Enough!  Back work to need I am must having go to and cleanse myself of usage internet else boss-attacked I am becomed.

The Tomb of the Ssessarids (map doodling)

So, thanks to G+ and the hangout phenomenon, I have been lucky enough to find a semi-regular play group. Got me really thinking about DM'ing again, although I love play and have insight that my role-play has become very very rusty.  One thing I really dig is tossing dice and generating PCs and NPCs from random stats.  I find that DCC does this very well with the luck roll and occupation.  I'm off after this to purchase a thing from RPGNow.

Meantime, the other thing I like to do is mapping.  I no longer have reams of maps I made as a wee git, plunging ever downward with my Kayen Telva (lifted from A1 The Slavepits of the Undercity) and magic markers.  However, with my fancypants scanner I am able offer a thing I made last night in a couple of hours, namely the tomb of the Ssessarids, the hideous mercantile family prone to internecine warfare with other traders in the capital city of Thrax.  They were rumored to be snake worshipers who mingled licentiously with reptilian things that slithered up from the pits beneath the capital city.  They searched for long-life or perhaps immortality but instead turned into a degenerate pack of corpse-eaters, lead in the end by a blue-black scaled she-demon.

In the interests of digitizing the thing, I had made a key but chopped it out with PS and cleaned it up with threshold etc.  I intended to feed it into Illustrator as a LiveTrace thing to clean up the lines but, meh.  I ran out of steam.

The entrance is an underground dome with a basin, guarded by caryatid columns who will attack if the players do not cleanse themselves in the basin's waters, first (Although this carries a risk of disease).  Packs of ghouls crawl from the various holes in the structure and broke free to maraud when the hidden entrance was revealed in a rockslide.  The whole complex is highly trapped - the Ssessarids loved Blue Cobra poison and the disfiguring scars that remain should interlopers not die shortly after injection.  At the far end of the complex, 'asleep' on his bier, lies the body of the clan's founder, a ghul sorceror of some potency who does not hesitate to call upon his patron's representative - an elegant Naga with the face of a seductress.  She has ties to the Yuan-Ti, and the crafty Serpent Men who first taught the clan to use and distill poisons, and who coached them in the arts of subterfuge.  Since the geological event that re-opened the tomb, the ghul raiders have swept into the nearby town nightly to feast on children, the elderly, and local beggars.  They had much wealth in life, and are jealous of their gold.

Anyways, it's all there in the map.  As always, the ascent is treacherous so take heede