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

The Solo Hex Crawl Percolates

Something, some memetic brainworm has got me thinking and the caffeine makes my fingers itch.  I got Lathan's Gold - TSR's XSOLO 9082 a few weeks back and it opened a whole can of nostalgia.  I read about somebody's sandbox hex-crawl (west crawl?) campaign.  I found my standby solo game of long-ago, Barbarian Prince, here. (and doubtless I will take up Cal Arath's sword again nigh the end of the day).  For a guy like your humble author, out in the woods with little bandwidth and few social contacts that game, solo adventuring reminds me of the early 1980's.  At that time, I had Telengard and The Temple of Apshai.  When I grew weary of those, I turned to Choose Your Own Adventure (hideously unplayable) and the Lone Wolf series, later.

The rise of computer gaming and the internet has brought thousands of gamers and role-players together instantly and without distance as a consideration, and I kind of dig the whole OSR that has spurted up.  Frankly, I don't much like the 3.5 version of AD&D that is very popular where I live.  My first "sort of" invite to a gaming group in about 20 years occurred yesterday in the front end of a Staples and although my heart hammered when the guy started talking Call of Cthulhu he said the group's standard fare is 3.5 D&D and my mouth went dry.  I can't afford new books after this DCC purchase - the reason I got out of RPGs in first place was the way my group got into powergaming and feats.  I dunno.  We'll see if beggars are choosers and how the thing plays out.

Where was I going with this?  Oh yeah, I have been thinking about using Twine as a way to cook up a solo PnP gaming diversion in the style of Lathan's Gold and Barbarian Prince.  Sort of a pre-IBM micromanager's dungeon quest.  I envision a caravan of Rothe guarded by grim soldiers who quiver at the sounds of the mushroom forests that circle the city of the deep gnomes with whom they trade.  Pretty nebulous at the moment, but I drew inspiration from the Lathan's Gold cover (IIRC was prone to almost instant destruction when erased by a pencil).  I can offer THIS hideous concoction to the gaming world, on which you may tally and check-mark to your heart's content, should you aim your caravan into the depths of the underdark or across vast sandy wastes.

Cherrios - they count as standard rations, if you're wondering.

Next up: a slithering, ghoulish patron for DCC.  Possibly another persistent horror.  Both in the style of the Old Ones that haunt Aereth.

Further down the line:  A campaign-setting using a mix of Clark Ashton Smith's France, and the Darklands RPG of the early 1990s.  Saints as patrons?  Of course!