The Sea Caves of Aubergiole

I found this file on my hard-drive a few days ago, and since I will never ever finish the project (and in fact I don't recall many of the ideas) I give it to the internet in goodwill. To each, as they say, according to their need. This was probably right after the publication of my solo gamebook. I think it's very clearly inspired by the D&D Expert module "Lathan's Gold" which was an epic "sailing around adventuring" solo module. Grand in scope and procedural possibility but sort of tangled up with weird mass combat mechanisms. Pretty sure it was conceived right around the heyday of the Google+ share-and-share alike era. I kinda dig the vibe, but the only thing that stands out to me particularly is the random starting entry mechanic, which is based in part on your Luck modifier (this is DCC obviously). I think I was also inspired by "Barbarian Prince" which is a long-time favorite of mine, and still available for free.

Also, I think I stole the Secrets idea from Kabuki Kaiser's "Mad Monks of Kwantoom" in which certain play experiences would prompt you to read appendices at the back of the gamebook and thus open up new ways to play, spells, PC races and options, and lore about the world of the game...

Way too ambitious in scope, in reflection. This was back when I thought fun ideas about tabletop RPGs, or at least read other peoples' fun ideas and synthesized things into something of my own. Now, I just play Skyrim with like 500 mods...

"Sea Caves initial entries the City".rtf

Oubliette of the Fishfolk

Cities:

1.       Aubergiole - Innsmouth Equivalent from French Inn (‘Auberge’) and Maw (‘Gueule’).  Market, Docks, Tavern, Supplies,

2.       Visulax – Specularum Equivalent: Docks, Market, Tavern

3.       Aredeth Bay – Pirate Port

4.       Helleborine – Coastal Megalopolis (off limits due to Zombie Plague)

5.       Marbourg – Seaside Town, nearby River (off limits due to Zombie Plague)

 

Islands:

1.       Three Harpies Key – Gate to Lightless Realms, Other Universes

2.       Meridot’s Cay- The Wizard Meridot’s Tower

3.       Hyomand Rock – The Oubliette of the Fishmen

4.       Forlorn Island – Giant Monsters, Occasional Big Treasures, Death for Big Parties

5.       Hammer Island (Home to Aredeth Bay) – Small Town, Pirate Wizard Patron

6.       Bloodrock Plinth – Empty, Granite and Basalt, Gribb Roosts

7.       The Island of the Amazonians (Mountain Range)

Locations:

1.       Sail upriver to near Halthrag Keep, attacked by Jackal Bandits

2.       The Howling Whirlpool of Awfulness, ship destroyed, flotsam!

3.       Jungle of Teth

4.       The Crystalline Spire of Meridot

Remember to give lots of opportunities for Luck Use, Saves, and Especially Thief Skill Checks

Random Non-Thief Character Starts

(for the start of the game, use 1d12 plus the Luck Modifier.  Pre-generated Characters Will Start at Specific Entries in the Book)

-3	GALLOWS!	SQUARE
-2	To the JAIL, BAD FINE, MAYBE DEATH	TRIAL
-1	INNSMOUTH TAINT: Thank the Gods it is morning, now.  You find yourself at the edge of a long and lonely dock in the city of Aubergiole, neck, hands and feet itching.  Your eyes are watering and your head hurts.  You have fought the overpowering urge to jump into the water and swim away since being awoken around 2 bells, after strange dreams of vast cities through which you floated.  As the sun rises, you feel somewhat better and resolve to take some aid to help you sleep, tonight.  A skilled thief like you can’t operate well when fighting urges like these! Looking down at the end of the barnacle-encrusted dock, you notice an Intricately Carved Tetrahedron, possibly a fishing weight or lure.  You may take it if you like.  Then, turn to DOCKS	DOCKS
0	SHANGHAI’ED AND CAST AWAY	ISLAND (Lonely)
1	SHIPWRECKED	ISLAND (Random)
2	KIDNAPPED AT SEA!	TEMPLE ISLAND
3	PLAGUE SHIP!	AT SEA(Random)/RANDOM DOCKS
4	In town, down on your Luck (-2 Luck), Gambling debt
5	On a Mission – Recover a Captive (Randomly Determined – Attached to Secrets!)
6	FIRST MATE, MUTINEERS – SHIP WITH POOR MORALE
7	On a Pilgrimage – See a Sight
8	Hunting Party – Fight a Monster
9	Cartographer for a Lord – Visit 4 different islands and map 3 locations of each (cities do not count!)	VOLCANO ISLAND
10	Free Agent – No particular Quest, 350 GP in Savings
11	SECRET AGENT! , Minor Sum of Gold for Expenses 1000XP, Kill the Bandit King	BANK
12	MAP TO TREASURE, TAVERN, No Money	TAVERN
13	MINOR TREASURE, MARKET, Skull Chime	MARKET
14	FIRST MATE, DEAD CAPTAIN – SHIP WITH GOOD MORALE	ISLAND (Random)
15	LAWYER’S OFFICE – ESTATE OF WEALTHY TRADING CAPTAIN UNCLE, FREE SHIP	DOCKS

 

Straight Thieves Begin in a Spot Determined by their Alignment, and Receive a Mission Based upon it, if they like.  Else, they can use the Random Chart and adjust the result depending upon

ALIGNMENT	START LOCATION	MISSION
Lawful	Hyomand Rock, Shoreline	Acquire The Prayers of Hydra Volume 4, Deliver to Boss in Aubergiole (or take the 4th Oath!)
Neutral	Aredeth Bay, Pirate Port	Ring the Storm Bell at the Top of Hyomand Rock, Watch What Happens (Or Destroy It, Better!)
Chaotic	Hyomand Rock, Acolyte’s Chamber	Assassinate the Priestess of Hydra, She Keeps the Undersea Peoples In Check (Or Assume the Priesthood Yourself, with 4th Oath and the Rod of Command)

 

SECRETS!!!

A.      Random Aubergiole House/Basements/Treasures/Monsters

B.      The Storm Bell – Rang It

C.      The Storm Bell – Cracked It

D.      Deep One Hybrid Class

E.       Eagle Eyrie on Meridot’s Cay

F.       The Dead Cyclops Underwater at Hyomand Rock

G.     The Dead Cyclops Chained to Forlorn Island

H.      Halthrag’s Circle On Hyomand Rock

I.        Ifrit’s Pizzle, Drink Recipe and Spell

J.        JaleBeard, the Pirate Wizard Patron

K.      On Kelpies

L.       On Lesthirash, the Wasp God

M.    On Merfolk

N.     On Nixies

O.     The Orpiment Skull Magic Item

P.      Pendlebrook – A Pleasant Spot

Q.     Queen Leonora of Hamathrace

R.      Raiders of Rayloon

S.       Summon Tentacular Horror

T.       Tcho Tcho PC Class

U.     Ulfire Mistress Patron

V.      Vecnull’s Revenge (A ship, The Cyberlich’s Flagship)

W.    Wizardarium Gate to Calabraxis

X.      X The Mysterious (A Sage)

Y.       Yeoman’s Bow Magic item

Z.       Zither of Antipathy Magic Item

 

NEW MONSTERS

Raylooni Raiders (Albinos, Tall, Thin, Debased) – Stout Ships, Low Damage

Cyborg Corsairs – Very Stout Ships, Somewhat Damaging

Deep One Hybrid Pirates – Weak Ships, Weak Damage

Tcho Tcho

Tentacular Horrors

Ocean Sprites, Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic

Kelpie/Seaweed Folk

Pirahna Birds

Amazonians

Island Sprites

 

 

PREGENERATED CHARACTERS/QUEST

Nithan Knifeknot – Thief, Lawful, Level  2 (Bring 10,000 in Gold to Bad Guy on the West Edge of Aredeth Bay by Day 30 to rescue your beloved Kelani). Swimming and Diving Skills

Murlo – Fighter, Lawful, Level 2 (Destroy a 5-Headed Hydra on Forlorn Island, Day 30). Commander Skills.

Diego Panselfaust – Male Halfling, Neutral, Level 2 (Take an Immortal Bride by Day 30).  Ladykiller Skills

Holga Vohrnknicht – Female Dwarf, Neutral, Level 2 (Find a place for the Clan to Live – there are 2 acceptable spots 1 on , Day 30).  Stoneworker Skills.

Brother Emmerit Lutz – Cleric, Chaotic, Level 2 – Find a New Home for Temple of Lesthirash the Wasp God.  Lore Skills.  Sacrifice a Ship to the Whirlpool and Find the Location of the Wasp Temple.  25 Days

Yesorian, Wizard, Chaotic, Level  2 – Acquire the Rod of Undeath, 50 Days, or Die!  (Very difficult for a Wizard but fairly simple for a Thief!)

 

THIEVES FOR HIRE (Special Thiefly Rules; You may hire a thief on the crew of your boat, but each skill roll calls for d6xrate fees, and each thief can be killed by monsters in landing parties.  Some locks cannot be picked by NPC thieves )

Aram, Barjum, Blastin, Corexin, Duglash, Efrim, Odess, Pyotr, Alenk, Gyurtom, Hirelm, Inigo, Jakes, Melporine, Nidora, Olegh, Trendio

SPECIAL HIRELINGS (For example, as in Barbarian Prince)

Wives/Husbands

Sages

Monsters

A Robot

Familiars/Demons/Imps/Quasits (for example, Spellvexit)

Sailing/Supplies/Ship’s Crews/Landing Parties/Morale (based on Personality)

 

Random Treasure Entries are given with the expected roll of dice, 1d3-1d100 (with 0 as a possible result); some areas will increase the given +d for monsters and some will decrease 

The Entrance to the Omega Bunker

The little town of Rad, and The Entrance to The Omega Bunker

 Rad is a village of 100-200 people, mostly nuclear families. It earned its name after many generations of farming the local radish-like root crop that was originally bred to remove radiation from contaminated soil. The root also happens to concentrate and store chaotic magic in its cellular structure, although the unimaginative farmers of Rad don’t know it. Some of the other more enterprising and weird inhabitants do, though. Born “Radishers” (for thus they call themselves) often have low-level mental mutations and magic-using abilities. A few are detailed below.  (ed's note: Sorry - lost track of this part but maybe later)

 Rad is situated on the rim of a vast hole in the ground, some 50 meters wide and many hundreds of meters deep. The soil and earthy crust of the area covers the edges of the hole, upon which all manner of strange flora and fauna teem and reproduce. Five meters below the rim, the earthen crust gives way to solid hyper-iridium walls covered with greebles and conduits and wires and sensors. Below that, a grated, meter-wide gantry clings to the circumference of the pit and spirals down at a steep angle. About halfway down the length of the pit, the gantry stops at a very solid-looking access hatch, complete with a formidable hatch-operating wheel. It is rusted, but with some lubricant, it will give way and provide access to the dungeon level within, but not before the party is accosted by 1d12 Stirges. All of the walls within are 8’ high, and except where noted, are made of slick molded aluminum. Imagine a dreary windowless office building, but more durable. If needed, bathrooms exist and might be a secure site for a long or short rest. Amazingly, electricity is available as is running water. Damage to the facility and infrastructure may negatively impact this.

 No one in Rad knows much about the facility below. Every so often a visitor to the town will take an interest and disappear within it but the villagers have developed a distinct lack of interest in the hole and its contents. They might be hired as guides and hirelings, but residents would probably not represent capable fighters – limited to torchbearers and porters. Capable men-at-arms would come from outside the immediate area

Please note, I have not provided a map for this area, only dungeon entries, which were mostly generated randomly and then I brushed them up with my brain and tried to tie them together semi-coherently

1. An abandoned storage area, containing shelves of various unusable junk – printer parts, obsolete tablet computers with cracked screens, empty ball point pens, coffee-stained neckties etc. There is also an Insane Cyberbrain that exists on minimal power tucked behind the other gizmos. It needs a Vocoder unit to speak and some sensors to receive input in order for it to be interacted with. These may be scavenged from other robots, or the whole thing might be installed in a robot chassis provided one is available. Determine its personality at random, but it’s been left to itself for a long time. It won’t remember its name or anything about the dungeon but it will provide moral support and encouragement and may make a fun PC or NPC if supplied with a body.
2. The party will encounter a Ghoul named Larry – the local janitor - here. He is practically immortal and hungry for flesh, but will respond well to rations or slightly less enthusiastically if offered other foods. He will try to make friends and lure the party to nearby traps. He is at odds with the Wererats in room 12.
3. This room is devoid of interesting features.
4. This average-sized room includes a steamy Rejuventation Pool - drinking or bathing in it will Increase Gravity in the room, causing all occupants' physical saves, skill checks, and initiative to be at disadvantage since everyone counts as encumbered. Entering the pool will remove one level of Exhaustion.
5. The room has a laser tripwire-activated shocking effect on the steel grate flooring, forcing a DC 15 Dexterity save or 1d6 electrical damage to the whole party. It may be avoided by stepping over the lasers which are at human knee-height. They are not readily detectible unless the lights are out in the room.
6. There is a Giant Shocker Lizard and a switch relay in this room. The panel of switches controls the security door in the north wall. The switches must be activated by switching them all in the up position, which will signal a bell, and then switching them all to the down position which will open the door. Any other combination will activate the shocking floor mechanism which damages all occupants (not the lizard!) for 1d6 electrical.
7. This room is devoid of interesting features.
8. Graffiti here says Remember: 3 Up Then 3 Down in fluorescent green spray paint. (see room 6 above).
9. There is a maggot-ridden body of a Cleric, holding a small bunch of wolfsbane. Its studded leather armor is intact. It has been gnawed on by Larry the Ghoul in room 2, but he didn’t finish because the body is slowly becoming green slime.
10. The room has 6 patches of green slime. One patch will hold a functional laser pistol that can be salvaged and cleaned.
11. This room is devoid of interesting features.
12. There is a group of 3 Wererats, engaged in a complex religious ritual. They serve Orcus and are praying to him for guidance. They will feign friendship and turn on the party when the party has taken significant damage or losses.
13. This room is devoid of interesting features.
14. The room has clumps of edible purple mold.
15. There are two “thrones” (fancy executive chairs) here - disturbing them in any way activates a Clay Golem. It is actually composed of plasticine modeling clay.
16. The party can encounter a sentient Worg, here.
17. There is a Infectious Constrictor Snake draped sleeping around a stylized iron maiden. Inside, clutched by a dusty skeleton , there is a Scroll of Ward against Lycanthropes.
18. This room is devoid of interesting features.
19. Mostly empty and clean, this room smells of rotten flesh.
20. This is a food-supply store room, with d6 edible rations and d10 aluminum cans of potable water. There are also some glossy magazines of various topics (e.g. “Skimmers Today” and “Protein Enthusiasts’ Digest”)
21. The room is coated with thick spider webs on all surfaces. Small spiders within may vocally object to the destruction of the webs, but they are only creepy nuisances. It will take 1d6 turns to remove the webs physically, or they may be lit on fire. When the webs are cleared away the skeletal body of a robed magic-user clutching a book will be discovered. The book contains 1d3 1^st level and 1 2^nd level Wizard spells. If the book has sustained fire damage, it will only hold “Nystul’s Magic Aura”.
22. This room has a Bottled City on a pedestal. The bottle is guarded by 2 Vampire Spawns. Touching or gazing into the bottle necessitates a DC 15 Wisdom save, or the entire party will be transported to a small, gloomy, vampire-plagued village for what seems like a day, but will only be 2 turns in reality.
23. A Thoqqua here wears a heat-proof iridium pendant, worth 700 gold coins. The creature’s melted slag burrow will lead down to a random room on the next dungeon level.
24. This large gallery is actually a Hallway of Gates – there are 1d10 active portals to other adventures or dungeon levels intermixed with the 20 doors. Non-active gate-doors open into very brightly lit closets.
25. This room is bare.
26. There are 25 hyper-iridium ingots here, stored in 5 military-style aluminum gear crates. They are all trapped with poisoned needles in the handles – if they are examined first, then the needle mechanism will be evident, and they can be disarmed easily by removing the needles. Not checking first will cause the first person (and any other careless handlers) to be pricked and take the Poisoned condition.
27. The fluorescent tube lights in this warehouse-sized room flicker on and off above a long stretch of office cubicles, complete with desks, paperclips, office supplies, and condescending motivational posters. There is also a mostly-empty Candwich vending machine. It contains 3 common Candwiches (PBJ/BBQ Pulled Pork equal chance) and 1 expired rare Candwich (make something cool up). Smashing the machine open will provide 1d6 gold coins. Each Candwich costs 2 gold pieces if bought the usual way.
28. This average-sized manager’s office includes a stately and obscenely carved wooden “desk” which is really an Altar To Orcus. Donating money to the donation plate on top causes the dot-matrix printer in the altar’s base to print out a detailed paper map of this dungeon level.
29. This room has a Matter Transmittal Pad that moves a user to the last place they long-rested that wasn’t in the dungeon. It’s a one-way trip.
30. There are 950 GP here, stored in a sealed aluminum sarcophagus. The treasure is trapped with contact poison on the coins. The lid of the sarcophagus is off, and skeletal bodies of adventurers are littered around it, holding handfuls of coins. Wine, floor polish, detergent, or some other weak solvent will remove the contact poison, but water won’t.

 

Random Encounters:

1. Mi-Go Assistant Manager Squad (1d4+2) These will harangue PCs about timeliness, efficiency, billable hours, etc. If the PCs do not wear ties or show other signs of employment, the Mi-Go will shoot them with an HR-Indoctrination Ray. Make a Wisdom Save DC 15 - failure indicates that the PC adds "Office Worker" (1-3 on a d6) or "Facilities Maintenance" (4-6 on the d6) to their background, and also adds a Temporary Insanity Condition to follow facility rules and procedures and request time off in the appropriate manner, etc. etc.

2. Morlock Office Workers (1d4) These are standing around gossiping at the nearest source of drinkable water (healthy or otherwise). If the PCs show signs of employment, they will welcome 'new hires' and commit acts of hazing on them "Deliver this McGuffin to Sector 4, new guy!"

3. Facilities Maintenance Skeletons (1d3) Obviously engaged in simple repairs and upkeep, these mindlessly attack with oversized wrenches, mops, plungers if they are prevented from accomplishing their current task. Often use chunky floor buffers, leaky pressure washers, and low-intensity flame throwers as appropriate.  

4. Section Manager Zombies (1d3) Clipboards in hand, they toddle mindlessly through hallways and seem enraged that no-one is where they ought to be. Only the taste of fresh brains will ease their emotional pains

5. Paperwork Dragon (1 only, reroll if defeated) This beast wanders the halls of the complex, accumulating forms, documents, records, and the occasional spell scroll to add to its mass. Counts as a Young Black Dragon - the breath weapon is a high-velocity gout of stinging ink and shredded paper that is both caustic and sticky. Particularly vulnerable to fire, it will flee from open flames and fire-like spell effects, but will stalk the party at a distance hoping to outlast their fiery resources. If the party flees, the next random encounter will also be this monster and it will automatically have surprise.

6. A lone Mongrelman Office Clerk and their cart of documents - clearly in a hurry and also evidently as mystified by the layout of the dungeon as the party is, this Mongrelperson is a temp and thus not protected by company policies from harassment by its tenured coworkers. It will give up documents (possibly a spell scroll, Ancient Stone Tablet, or low-level spellbook) if the PC identifies itself as the rightful recipient. The Mongrelperson has no inclination to check PC identities in this matter, and indeed corporate policy does not require it to do so. Will hilariously agree to be taken on as a henchman/hireling but aside from its innate ability to mimic voices this NPC is fairly useless. He/she/it can be encountered more than once 

 

 

Happy Farming Upgrade Dungeon

I've been playing Stardew Valley on my kid's Switch for the past few weeks. Let's be clear: I'm not new to SV - in fact I think I got into it when it was pretty new, but I gave it up after I put Stardew Extended on my computer and modded it up so my kid could play with anime portraits. I had beat it once before straight (i.e. no mods) and then after that I modded it up in order to see all the interesting cut scenes and secrets and such.

On the Switch, you can't mod so everything's got to be on the up-and-up. Every larger inventory bag, every house upgrade, every skill increase and heart event has to be earned. I'm used to playing this way from the C64 and many DOS games from back in the day, but earning my way through all the possible upgrades in Stardew Valley - even many of the 'late game" features made me do a lot of thinking and planning and strategizing and in some cases referring to the wikis out there!

I dreamt up an upgrade-path campaign! Start with the DnD5e Basic rules - the freebie document one. Everybody can choose to be a human or a halfling or maybe an animal person or a clockwork person/robot to start with. Go on an adventure in the dungeon and bring back some loot. THEN you can apply the GP to the village/setting, and for that you get bountiful XPs! If you're more into trad stuff (LAME!) then you can also get XP for dealing death to monsters etc. but you get a multiplier for XP spent on the village and villagers.

Want to play a druid? Upgrade the Old Witch's Hut - 200 GP (for which you receive 300 XP)

Want to play a cleric of some other domain besides Life/Healing? Pay for a little shrine, which can be upgraded to a chapel, to a temple, to a cathedral, etc...

Seems to me that it ought to have caps on level so as to encourage the development of variety and investments/purchases for the village/town/etc.. Maybe cap it at level 5 to start with, and those PCs go on to be managed and not necessarily USED at game time to explore dungeons. This'd give folks stuff to do with their PCs during downtime. This kinda meshes well with my old (unused) idea of a stable of tradeable characters usable by the whole group of players.

So your cute little piggy people are totally motivated to get into the dungeon and bring back gold coins, so that they can buy the parts to repair the water pump and improve the wells of the town, but also now they got elected pro-tempore mayor! OH NO!

Anyways, more later. I just found the games "Iron Valley" and "Cozy Village" on itch

People tell me that "The Nightmares Beneath" and "Errant" have good systems for managing this sort of thing but I havent followed up yet

Peace be upon you! 

Gongfarmers on Sea-Devil's Island

Inspired by this podcast - Christian B. has an entertaining and edifying and justice-aware view of the ways that business and corruption drive our lives.

So: the Dungeon Crawl Classics rulebook has a 0-level starting occupation that is a pretty interesting in that it's literally the shittiest job you ever heard of: Gongfarmer. What is a gongfarmer? well, it's someone who empties chamberpots and collects shit and piss for other things. I think historically speaking it was tanneries that used piss and shit in an economical way. Turning shit and piss into money is a special kind of alchemy, I guess. So - the job sucks, but within the framework of DCC you leave it (assuming you survive your first adventure) and become an adventurer. But like, a REAL adventurer who already knows how to muck around in the shit-soaked underground and bring out a living.

Thereafter, all your occupational rolls - anything involving the collection of shit and piss and underground exploration and survival - are at d20 rather than the lowly d10 that an unskilled check would involve. Pretty broad, because there's a lot of shit and piss in the world, and a lot of terrible places to fuck around in.

Brings me back to the aforementioned podcast - so in the mid 1800's in the US - around the world, really - it was discovered that nitrogen found in guano of birds (and later bats) could be reliably transformed into fertilizer. I think you would be surprised at what a big deal this is, and what having reliable crop fertilizer does for a population of humans. It's pretty transformative.

And so, inevitably, capitalists, indutrialists, colonialists, and all the other worst sorts of entrepreneurs seized upon the notion of finding sea-bird infested islands and stripping them bare of everything. Well, not everything, but all the birdshit which was the important part.

This really happened, and as I drove in a mindless lull, listening to this young woman relate the tale of desperate men on a blazing hot, shit-soaked island in the Pacific, struggling against weather and famine and oppression and rats, I got a sense of what a REAL Gongfarmer's Adventure would look like - something like trying to take on The Isle of Dread (X1) but instead of a sword all you have is a trowel at first and maybe some Kuo-Toa, and Cthulhu rising out of the cyclopean depths at the end...

Anyways, it's a decent podcast and Busted Business Bureau is totally worth a subscribe.

INSERT NEW TABLE FOR GONGFARMER EQUIPMENT (A work in progress)

1. Shit-and-piss-proof boots

2. Canary in a cage (for deadly gas detection)

3. Umbrella/Umbrella hat for staving off the evil sun's hateful rays

4. UV50 protection sunscreen/paste/mud

5. Rusty pick (d6) - may cause disease on a critical

6. Rusty shovel (d8) - see 5 above

7. Guano-bag

8. Rat-poison pellets

9. Mermaid-resistant earplugs

10. Thick-soled leather knobbly-lugged climbing shoes

11. A rope with a lot of knots tied in it

12. Makeshift crampons

13. Hardtack/biscuits in a water-and-shit proof container

14. The nightshift has non-flame electric torches because the gas is explosive

15. Natural immunity or resistance to several terrible illnesses

BRIEF ADVENTURE FRAMEWORK

Island/Nautical

Terrible "employers" (really slavers) just begging for an ass-whooping

Deep-Ones/Kuo-Toa cultists lurking around constantly

Mermaids - I mean what horned-up, broke-ass, desperate shit-miner wouldn't be tempted by mermaid song?

Pan-Lung water dragons, tired of eating seabirds and seals

Maybe a shit-encrusted temple underneath a couple of tons of/layers of rock-hard guano

Deep-One gold artifacts here and there (but the tyrannical slavers who run the place want it for themselves)

A well-guarded and ugly (but fast and seaworthy) ship to get away in when the guano hits the fan

Finally, and most-dreadfully, the imminent arrival of Dagon/Hydra/Evil Neptune/Nodens/Cthulhu telegraphed by weird astronomical and weather events, and freaked-out birds and rats

The Long Dark Teatime of the Blog

Hey don't worry, internet pals! I'm still alive. What's good with you? That's great! What's good with me?  Uhh, we're playing a pretty fun extended "campaign" of 5e/DCC/Holmes/PbtA/ItO - pretty regular, rulesets vary but the setting and vibe is pretty much always the same. "Thrend" is a mixed-genre thing with Mutants and Magick and Weird Technology and Feudal Fantasy Americana/Oz/Tolkienisms. Mostly an excuse for us to get together and have pizza and beer every few weeks and laugh hilariously. I've been mulling over really putting the screws to my players and making them count arrows and torches and encumbrance etc. but uhhhhhhh I don't know. I sort of like the vibe we have. Think: Wizard of Oz crossed with Shadowrun and Star Frontiers. Picaresque, characters totally disposable but hilariously memorable mostly.

Sort of stole this, sorry OP, but it's close

The order of play is:

1) Sit down, catch up, order pizza, drink first beer.

2) Roll on my stolen-from-Oriental Adventures 1e monthly and weekly and daily events chart.

3) Interpret each roll in the context of the friend chat - interestingly my players are totally down with even half-hearted abortive jokes being used as canonical truths in the game narrative. No joke is safe from becoming interpreted into the campaign world.

4) Roll for carousing. My one player whose name rhymes with "Will" has a 3rd level Holmes human magic-user with an 18 charisma so his reaction roll is pretty disruptive to my plans and he's leaving markers and IOUs all over town. But luckily the carousing results prompt all sorts of events and hilarity.

This is how every game starts for the group, basically.

5) Do we make it to the dungeon? Yes - we are playing Zach H.'s refit of the Holmes starter dungeon, in preparation for running "Things Better Left Alone" which is Holmes' actual home dungeon and appears partly in the Boinger and Zereth novels - get thee hie to find if ye've not done

6) Use loose Holmesian rules to play, loose Moldvay order of combat/explore (including reaction rolls always), DCC vibes to vibe it, and Dungeon-World/PbtA/Perilous Wilds when adjudication needs, uhh, adjudicating

Example: last week, an incursion of haughty winged elfin refugees from the Sky Islands onto Portowne's southern farmlands and the deaths of a few innocent plebs required intervention. Carousing had already happened, mysterious amounts of money done spent, and obligations and complications discussed. The party, with new orc and goblin bar-back hirelings in tow, falsified the deed to the cliffside above the ocean on the dungeon and the elfs were too dumb/proud/irritating to check, so off the whole tribe went in a flash. I guess they will contend with the pirates, Dagonites, and Amazonians that are in the vicinity already, so that's fun. Then they went into the caves, murdered some pirates, bullied some Dagonites (who all hit the road back to the reef and probably tattled). The party DID NOT make it into the Dagonite mini-ziggurat, but they DID fight some weresharks and the fighter(paladin?) of G.I. Jesus contracted a suspicious fever, so they hot-footed it back to town and were quested by the Temple of The Red Mother's abbot to root out and destroy the Dagonites in the caves. They were given an Amazonian Spear +1 to put a dent in the weresharks, and I guess we needn't rely on the only magic weapon (a +1 dagger) they have to get much further into the dungeon.

So the Aerth is on fire, the current architects and administrators of the land are rabid hateful gibbons, upheavals everywhere, and superstition and barbarity are the order of the day. High technology is ubiquitous - almost magickal! And magick is making a resurgence. Androgyne elfs and robots stalk the land. 

Wait, is this my campaign, or is it the Waking World? The answer is: YES!

Luckily, I am playing things I don't share too much or often - you Dear Reader might be amused by the hilarity of my group. I beat Tears of the Kingdom last month which was practically a religious experience.

Wintermute is going to take my job and kick my shit in for all those LogicBomb 3.0s back in '87

Reading when I am able. Tearing apart/putting back together guitars and making weird instruments often. Collecting the tools I will need when Artificial Intelligences (blast them!) actually do take my job. Printing and painting the occasional mini - Cawdor warband, greenskin army, and a Rogue-Trader era Nurgle Genestealer Cult are on the bench but there is literally no pressure to ever finish those. I also have an orky Blood Bowl team always in progress - last week I printed out some bases and stripped some BB2e models I found for a steal.

Things are okay, but blogging ain't a priority at the moment. I'm still here tho!